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Use These Apps If Your Cell Carrier Has An Outage

You can still text and call when your carrier has an outage, if you have the right apps.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Verizon customers across the eastern side of the country dealt with a headache Tuesday morning. There was an outage that kept people from texting. 

RELATED: Verizon service restored after widespread outage on east coast Tuesday morning

Now it was done pretty quickly. But if you ever need to contact someone, you may not have enough time to wait for the outage to be over. 

That's where messaging apps can come in handy. They all use wifi instead of your phone's network. So as long as you can access some wifi you can contact someone.

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Cnet.com recommends Signal and GroupMe for both Apple and Android Users. Signal encrypts all messages sent between users. So your messages stay between you and the person you're talking to over the phone. 

GroupMe is designed for groups that need to plan an event, RSVP, or just keep in touch. 

For Apple users, Cnet recommends Viber for texts, video calls, and even money transfers. For Android users, Cnet recommends Facebook's WhatsApp Messenger. It does texts, phone calls and is beta testing video calls. 

RELATED: Facebook Will Soon Encrypt Messages on Messenger

If you want to make sure your messages stay private, however, you need to think more about encryption. Click here to see some apps that specialize in security. 

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