Zoom, the popular video conferencing platform that millions use to connect for work and school, was down most of Monday morning for thousands of users across the globe. Educators, parents and students were most challenged by the system glitches, with thousands starting virtual school via the platform Monday.
Users reported issues logging in, connecting to the server and generally using the site, according to monitoring site Downdetector. The outages were first reported about 7:40 a.m. ET Monday. By Monday afternoon, the numbers of reported outages dropped from nearly 17,000 to less than 3,000 reports of Zoom outages.
Grade schools, high schools and universities are relying on Zoom and competing technologies such as Microsoft Teams to reduce the chance of infection during the pandemic. Technical issues are occurring across the U.S., with the most reports on the East Coast, as well as in Europe, according to downdetector.com, which monitors self-reported outages.
Zoom Video Communications became a familiar tool to millions of new users after the spread of COVID-19 made face-to-face meetings risky. It now has about 300 million users. It suffered some growing pains during the early months of the pandemic, such as “zoombombers” who crashed meetings, but successfully went public in April.
Zoom announced via its Twitter page about 10:20 a.m. ET that it had identified the issue. It would be hours before the international communications giant could offer a substantial progress report for its customers.
Everything should be working properly now! We are continuing to monitor the situation. Thank you all for your patience and our sincere apologies for disrupting your day.
At its peak, the Zoom outage primarily kept users from logging in. There were also reported difficulties with access the server and video quality throughout Monday morning.
Credit: Via Downdetector
Credit: Via Downdetector
Those still having issues signing into the platform can use www.status.zoom.us to report the issue.
With some schools, including those in Georgia and Ohio, starting virtual classes on Zoom on Monday, the outage of the meeting platform was particularly challenging. One mom, Nytasha Brown, reported that as of later Monday morning, her children were still having problems accessing their classes administered via Zoom in West Chapel, Florida.
“Still having issues in Wesley Chapel Florida. My kids are having a hard time following n participating in their zoom meetings. Glitching and kicking them out. Very horrible video quality,” she wrote on the Downdetector site.
Hilliard City Schools, in Columbus, Ohio, reported that it was having technical issues due to the site crashing Monday morning.
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