Zoom down: users of video-calling platform report errors globally

Video-calling app Zoom, a lifeline for businesses and personal communication during the pandemic, was down for many users around the world on Sunday.

People reported audio and video problems when trying to join meetings from about 12pm.

The company's help centre listed Zoom Meetings and Zoom Dashboard and Reporting as having "degraded performance". All other services were listed as "Operational".

Zoom updated users at 7.40pm, writing: "Zoom users impacted by this issue should now be able to host, join, and participate in Zoom Meetings and Zoom Video Webinars if they restart their sessions.

"We will continue to assess this matter that impacted a subset of our users and monitor to ensure no further operational impact."

At 8.15pm, representatives for the platform said the issue affecting Zoom Meetings had been resolved.

"We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused,” a Zoom representative said.

As people around the world continue to work from home, the platform has been relied on for professional communication and personal calls, keeping families in touch with each other as they continue to maintain social distancing.

The National tested the app and found it to be down for several users in the UAE on May 17.

Problems were reported regionally, in Europe and across the US.

Some UAE users took to social media to find answers.

"Zoom can you confirm your status please? Many issues this afternoon here in Dubai," Natalie Bridge tweeted.

Another user said: "Zoom, is there an issue with your app? It's not working in Dubai."

@zoom_us can you confirm your status please? Many issues this afternoon here in Dubai.
— NatDXB (@NatalieBridge14) May 17, 2020

This is not the first problem Zoom has had in recent weeks. At the end of April, there was confusion as to whether it had 300 million "participants" a day, or 300 million "active users".

"We want to be clear: this was first announced in our April 22 webinar as 300 million daily participants by our chief executive Eric Yuan," Zoom said on Thursday, April 30.

"In a follow-up blog post on April 22 recapping this webinar, in addition to referring to participants as ‘participants,’ we also inadvertently referred to them as ‘users’ and ‘people’.

"When we realised this error on April 23, we corrected the wording to ‘participants’. This was a genuine oversight on our part."

Zoom last released a software update on Thursday, April 30.