Zoom reported a "partial outage" of meetings and webinars Monday morning, just as many schools are beginning to rely on video conferencing to reopen remotely due to the pandemic.
Um...is @zoom_us down for everyone RN? pic.twitter.com/iLpNmFuR6Y
— Melissa Burnham (@mmburnham) August 24, 2020
According to Down Detector, the outages started around 5 a.m. PT Monday morning, noticeably when adults and students would have been logging on for the day's classes and meetings. The service's status page lists zoom phone, chat, website, and recording all as operational, so only meetings and webinars have been affected so far. However, even a partial outage has left many users affected while working from home or attempting to go to school.
Users took to reporting on Twitter after noticing their attempts to log-in and join video meetings were unsuccessful. While the outage is currently being reported worldwide, many students in the United States will be hit especially hard, since schools and colleges are set to resume virtually this month.
In fairness, who could ever have predicted that the first day of classes at thousands and thousands of schools across the country would put such a heavy load on Zoom?
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) August 24, 2020
Getting ready to teach first day of class and get this email. ???? pic.twitter.com/9U20dhUOzq
— Robert L. Tsai (@robertltsai) August 24, 2020
"If you're having trouble connecting to Zoom, we have identified the issue and are working on a fix," the company said in a tweet. "We're so sorry about the inconvenience." Zoom referred customers to its status page, which as of 7:30 am PT still showed outages.
@zoom_us is down in South Africa! Ouch. Feels quite painful for this customer. https://t.co/IMU7cowkRk
— Michelle Ashen (@Michelle_Ashen) August 24, 2020
Digital Trends reached out to Zoom for comment and will update when we hear back.
While Zoom investigates the outages, there is currently no planned time for fixes, which means users will most likely have to push pause on their workdays. Inconvenience aside, this might be a great time for a break.
This is a developing story. We will update this story as we learn more.So ZOOM is out campus wide. My laptop is buzzing, phone melting down....I would cry, but I decided to laugh and have a cup of tea.
— Mark Zeigler (@fsuzeigler) August 24, 2020
