A handy way to maintain service if the network ever goes down – again
If you’re an iPhone owner currently living in a major American city, you may see the words “SOS only” on your status bar. You’re probably not the only one, because at the time of this writing, the US is recovering from a major cellphone outage leaving tens of thousands without service.
This outage hit one of the US‘ largest wireless providers: AT&T (it’s unclear if any other service was offline or simply getting reports because T-Mobile, for instance, customers could not contact anyone on ATT). Cellular companies are working to restore service, but it may be a while until everything is back to 100 percent. Most smartphones will be left in the dark during this time. However, iPhones have a special SOS Only mode, retaining their ability to make calls to emergency services when the network is unceremoniously down.
Fortunately, you don’t have to wait until the network comes back online to make non-emergency calls as iPhones support Wi-Fi Calling.
