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 โ apps that have become necessities to keep work-from-home life running smoothly during theย coronavirusย 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. Verizonโs 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 Servicesโ 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 โinvestigating connectivity issues with an internet provider, mainly affecting the East Coast of the United States, outside of the AWS Network.โ Slack said there were no issues with its own service.