Many Verizon mobile users experienced a major service disruption on Wednesday afternoon, with customers reporting that their phones suddenly went into SOS mode.

Verizon experienced an outage across the U.S. that started soon after 12 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday.

Verizon said on Wednesday that it was working to restore its mobile and data services, as more than 170,000 users reported outages to the website Downdetector, which tracks user reports of service dis...

Initial reports of widespread outages came in just before 1 p.m. Wednesday, according to data from Downdetector.com that monitors cellular service outages.