Zoom users disconnected as calling app hits a glitch

Video-calling app Zoom – a lifeline for businesses and forpersonal contact during the pandemic – was down yesterday for many users. From about midday UAE time, users reported audio and video problems when trying to join meetings.

The company’s help centre listed Zoom Meetings, Zoom Video Webinars and Zoom Dashboard & Reporting as having “degraded performance”. All other services were listed as “operational”.

At 7pm, Zoom said it was continuing to investigate. Initially it said it had received reports that some users “may be experiencing issues hosting and joining meetings”.

“Our team is working to identify the root cause and scope of this issue,” it said.

Later it provided an update as more users reported problems.

“Our team is investigating the cause of issues joining Zoom Meetings. These issues appear to be limited to a subset of users.”

As people around the world continue to work from home, the platform has been relied on for professional communication and personal calls.

The National tested the app and found it to be down for several users yesterday. Issues were reported regionally, as well as in Europe and across the US.

By 8.15pm Zoom reported that 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”. It promised to continue to monitor the situation.

Yesterday, some UAE users took to social media to find answers, with Natalie Bridge tweeting: “Zoom, can you confirm your status please? Many issues this afternoon here in Dubai.”

Others asked: “Zoom, is there an issue with your app? It’s not working in Dubai.””

This is not the first issue Zoom has hit 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,” Zoom said on April 30.

“In a follow-up blog post on April 22, in addition to referring to participants as ‘participants’ we also inadvertently referred to them as ‘users’. This was a genuine oversight on our part.”

Zoom last released a software update on April 30.