North Carolina residents struggling to contact their families in the wake of Hurricane Helene aren't the only Americans experiencing cell service outages this week. On Sept. 30, Verizon customers began reporting service outages in major cities like New York,

Your phone being in SOS mode is an indication that your device cannot connect to a network, but it can reach certain personnel via satellite connectivity. SOS mode is Apple's "Emergency SOS via Satellite" feature that lets users connect to satellites to reach emergency services in poor coverage areas.

Some Verizon customers across the U.S. were hit by a service outage Monday. The issue appeared to knock out cellphone service for tens of thousands of Verizon users. Data from outage tracker DownDetector shows that reports topped 100,