Los Banos, CA (October 20, 2025) — In the early hours of Monday, October 20, 2025, customers of Verizon Wireless across the U.S., including the city of Los Banos, California, reported loss of mobile and internet service (calls, texts, and data). This lack of service was accompanied by devices showing “SOS” or “Emergency Calls Only.” This followed a prior nationwide Verizon outage on Friday, October 17. Officials said the October 20 interruption appears tied to a wider internet-infrastructure failure rather than strictly a Verizon network fault.
The disruption started in the early hours of Monday; users across multiple states reported service loss shortly after midnight PT (~3:00 a.m. ET). At the same time, Amazon Web Services (AWS) logged issues in its US-EAST-1 region that may have contributed. In contrast, the October 17 Verizon outage began late Thursday night and peaked near midnight ET with over 7,500 user reports logged on the tracking service DownDetector.
The Friday incident on October 17 hit major metro areas including New York, Boston, Washington D.C., and California’s population centres. Reported outages covered both mobile and home-internet services. On October 20, the disruption coincided with the AWS outage that had global ripple effects, though it is unclear how broadly Verizon’s own network was impacted.
In Los Banos, residents and businesses using Verizon services reported loss of mobile signal and data access. Some businesses relying on cellular connectivity (e.g., credit-card readers) were affected. Phones displaying “SOS mode” remained able to call emergency services via another carrier’s network. There were no confirmed reports of emergency outcomes tied to the outage. Local advisories reminded users that 911 service remained available and recommended device restarts and Wi-Fi calling where possible. Restoration was noted by midday.
Verizon did not provide a region-specific timeline, but recovery in California is expected by Monday afternoon. On the earlier October 17 incident, Verizon said full wireless service was restored by that evening.
Verizon acknowledged the outage and apologized for the inconvenience, describing it as a “software issue impacting wireless service for some customers.” AWS said the outage stemmed from its internal systems and that there was no indication of malicious activity. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is monitoring the situation.
The October 20 disruption appears linked to the AWS cloud failure (specifically, issues with DNS or load-balancing in the US-EAST-1 region). The October 17 Verizon-only outage is still being investigated; Verizon has not released a detailed root-cause analysis. Earlier in October, Verizon reported that service disruptions in Southern California were caused by vandalism (fiber-optic cable cuts).
