Verizon outage affecting thousands of customers

(NEW YORK) -- Some Verizon customers were experiencing a service outage on Wednesday afternoon, according to the company.

Verizon said it was not immediately clear how long the service would be down.

"We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers," Verizon said in a statement to ABC News. "Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience."

Many Verizon customers said on social media that their phones showed "SOS" in place of network bars.

According to Downdetector, at least 175,000 Verizon customers were affected at one point, but that number has since gone down. Downdetector, a site that tracks outages, said Verizon customers began noticing interrupted service around noon Eastern time.

By 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, the number of Verizon customers affected by the outage was down to less than 60,000, according to Downdetector.

In a social media post shortly after 4 p.m. ET, Verizon said a team "is on on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers."

New York Emergency Management (NYCEM) officials said the outage was affecting some users calling 911.

"Verizon is working to solve the issue," NYCEM said in a statement. "If you have an emergency and cannot connect using your Verizon Wireless device, please call using a device from another carrier, a landline, or go to a police precinct or fire station to report the emergency. In the meantime, you can check the website or social media account of your cellphone carrier for updates."

Multiple law enforcement agencies have spent hours looking into the possibility that the Verizon outage could be the result of a cyberattack. But as of now, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News the belief is the outage is a technical issue and not the result of a cyberattack or some other nefarious act.  

The federal government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is referring questions to Verizon.

Editor's note: The story was updated to correct the attribution on the number of outages.

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