Zoom’s videoconferencing service is apparently having a widespread outage in the US, causing chaos as millions of children and teachers attempt to start the school year online.
Down Detector shows a spike in Zoom users reporting issues with logging in to the video conferencing service early on August 24, mainly affecting users in the eastern US and in the UK. There are currently several thousand outage or issue reports on Down Detector.
Zoom has also acknowledged the outage on its status report page. The company said: “We have received reports of users being unable to visit the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars. We are currently investigating and will provide updates as we have them.”
Zoom was an early beneficiary of the videoconferencing boom spurred by the coronavirus pandemic — the company grew from 10 million daily meeting participants in December to more than 300 million daily meeting participants today — but the platform has experienced several outages this year that has disrupted its service for users.
Nonetheless, it’s one of the main platforms — in addition to Google Meet — being used by schools for online learning this year, and it continues to play a key role in the remote work tech lineup.
By Natalie Gagliordi | August 24, 2020