On Monday, quite a number of internet-based services, among them the most used messaging app in the world – WhatsApp – went down due to a major internet outage.
Web users across the entirety of Europe have made their feelings known to the world with respect to slow internet connections that affected the area throughout the day. This meant that millions were unable to access their WhatsApp, Slack, Reddit, Trello and Medium accounts, just to name but a few. The issue was not just affecting standalone apps, but it was also evident on quite a number of websites across the continent.
As it seems, the main reason for the outage was a fault that seemed to be affecting one of the transatlantic cables by web provider TeliaSonera that link the U.S. and Europe. Apparently, the fault on the cable led to a knock-on effect with respect to quite a number of hosting companies, among them Amazon Web Services as well as Cloudflare, among others. The result of this was that millions of people could not be able to establish internet connections on the devices they use to browse the web, chat with WhatsApp friends or take part in Reddit forums, among other services.
Both of the aforementioned web hosting companies went public with statements regarding the outage. While the two confirmed the outage was coming from outside their networks, they were also quick to reassure their customers that everything was being done to ensure that all is well.
Later in the day, things went back to normal as the issue had been taken care of. However, the fact that millions could not access usual services on WhatsApp, Slack, Reddit and other web platforms for hours could have negative impacts, especially if users are unaware of the causal agent behind the outage. WhatsApp, for instance, has a huge following in Europe and with such an outage, it meant people could not communicate via their most-favored medium.