Verizon acknowledged an hours-long service outage Wednesday, which has impacted hundreds of thousands of its customers in the Midwest and East Coast, and promised that it was working to resolve the issue.

Customers started reporting the outage to tracking website downdetector at noon, which spiked to 148,000 reports by 12:45 p.m. Eastern. The highest reported concentration was in New York City, but users in Charlotte, Houston and Atlanta also noted significant issues. 

Users have reported that their phones showed "SOS" in place of network bars and the outage is also impacting cellular data and voice services.

"Verizon's team is on the ground actively working to fix today’s service issue that is impacting some customers," the company said in a post on X. "We know this is a huge inconvenience, and our top priority is to get you back online and connected as fast as possible. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this issue."

Verizon has not provided an update on the issue since 4 p.m. Eastern, but the number of reported issues at the time of publishing has decreased to 32,700 users, according to Downdetector. 

Other cellular companies, including T-Mobile, have said they are not experiencing an outage, but warned customers who try to communicate with friends and family members who use Verizon that they may not be able to connect.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.