Big Internet outages hit the East Coast, causing issues for Verizon, Zoom, 
Slack, Gmail

Rachel Lerman
2-3 minutes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/26/internet-outage-east-coast/

People across the East Coast were having trouble accessing core Internet 
services Tuesday morning, just as they were logging on for work and school.

Users reported trouble loading Gmail, Slack and Zoom — apps that have become 
necessities to keep work-from-home life running smoothly during the coronavirus 
pandemic. Downdetector, which tracks reports of outages, showed widespread 
issues with Verizon, Google, Zoom, YouTube, Slack, Amazon Web Services and 
others Tuesday just before noon.

On Twitter, which many still were able to access, people reported they were 
seeing issues with their Verizon Fios Internet service. Verizon’s customer 
support team said on Twitter Tuesday that a fiber had been cut in Brooklyn, 
which could possibly account for some of the issues. The support account on 
Twitter quickly became inundated with customers asking why their internet was 
slow and bumpy.

It was not immediately clear what was causing the outages, though many people 
pointed to issues with their Verizon Fios service. Amazon Web Services’ status 
page showed its service, which provides computing power to large swaths of the 
Internet, was experiencing an issue with an external provider. On its status 
page, it said that it is “investigating connectivity issues with an internet 
provider, mainly affecting the East Coast of the United States, outside of the 
AWS Network.” Slack said there were no issues with its own service.

The outage also disrupted school districts’ online teaching programs, which 
have become essential in the past year.

Prince William County Public Schools in Virginia tweeted just after noon 
Tuesday that it is “aware of Internet connection problems with Verizon FIOS 
impacting students and staff.”

Verizon, Google, Amazon and Zoom did not immediately respond to a request for 
comment.
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