WhatsApp Services Restored Globally Following Widespread Outage

US-based messaging platform WhatsApp, which on October 25 faced a global outage, has been restored for users after the unexplained disruption.

The messaging app suddenly stopped working for its users afternoon across the globe and it is claimed to be the biggest outage ever for the messaging platform.

The resumption of service was confirmed by several users, with some in India, Asia, and the United Kingdom said they were able to send and receive some messages and videos.

WhatsApp's services across many parts of India and the world were disrupted making thousands of users unable to send or receive messages on the Meta-owned platform.

According to the Downdetector, a platform that provides real-time information about the status of various websites and services, the users started facing issues around 12:35 PM IST.

Within 15 minutes of it being down, #WhatsappDown started trending on the microblogging platform Twitter in India and garnered over 80,000 tweets on it.

Moreover, many users took to Twitter and shared funny memes on the issue.

As per the outage reporting site, users around the world started noticing unusually high "problem reports" and listed thousands of such reports by 1 pm in India. Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may have affected a larger number of users.

Meta-owned messaging app’s latest outage comes during the festive season in India - its biggest market by user count- when people use the platform even more than usual to send season's greetings. Over 2 billion users rely on WhatsApp for communication and payments. India is WhatsApp's biggest market by user base.

The outage reporting site also revealed that the messaging app had stopped working for many users in Asia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Europe. The Downdetector showed that many users had issues sending and receiving texts and videos.

Most reports were about messages not going through, at 69 percent, while others reported server disconnection and the app crashing altogether.   Responding to Business Today's query, WhatsApp's parent company Meta said, "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we're working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.”

Downdetector's heatmap was showing WhatsApp users in major cities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata were impacted by the disruption.