A major Verizon network outage swept across the United States on January 14, 2026, knocking out mobile calls, text messaging, and data for hundreds of thousands of customers. Phones dropped into “SOS” mode, emergency calls were impacted in some regions, and millions were left without reliable communication.

In this CyberGuardians Breaking News update, Marissa delivers a full situation report on what happened, which cities were affected, how emergency services were impacted, what Verizon has said so far, and why this was not a cyberattack but still a serious infrastructure failure.

We also break down what this outage reveals about how fragile modern communication networks really are and what users should do when cellular systems fail.

This episode covers:
• Timeline of the Verizon outage
• Cities and regions affected
• 911 and emergency service disruptions
• Verizon’s official response
• Why this was not a cyberattack
• What this means for telecom reliability

Stay safe and stay secure.