Thousands hit by internet outage on East Coast

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Munsif Vengattil | Reuters

Thousands of individuals across the U.S. East Coast faced widespread internet outage Tuesday, disrupting services offered by Google, Amazon, Zoom, Slack and other big tech firms.

Verizon Communications Inc, a major broadband services provider in the United States, alerted users about a fiber cut in Brooklyn and said it has not yet estimated the repair time.

Amazon.com Inc’s cloud computing arm said it is investigating connectivity issues with an internet provider, which was causing disruptions to AWS services, and in turn to many online services that rely on it.

Outage monitoring website Downdetector.com also showed reports of outages at Comcast Corp, Roblox Corp and Slack Technologies Inc.

“The Verizon and Comcast outages are the closest things we get to snow days during the pandemic,” a Twitter user said.

The Verizon and Comcast outages are the closest things we get to snow days during the pandemic.

— matt blaze (@mattblaze) January 26, 2021

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Users on retail trading platforms Charles Schwab Corp and Robinhood also reported operational problems in the market session for the second day in a row on Tuesday, according to Downdetector.com.

The outage monitoring website showed 791 user complaints about server connection and login issues from customers using Robinhood, the fintech startup credited with helping popularize trading among millennials.

More than 200 Charles Schwab users said they faced problems with the website and could not log in or place trades, according to Downdetector.

“Earlier this morning, we experienced an issue with bank balances not displaying accurately that has since been resolved. Trading functionality was not impacted,” a Charles Schwab spokeswoman said.

Robinhood said its platform was functional.

Check back for updates.

Source: Orange County Register