WhatsApp services restored after major global outage

Muscat: WhatsApp services were restored after facing a major outage that lasted for more than an hour.

In the Sultanate, the outage was reported around 11 am when messages when users realized that they were not able to receive or send messages.

A Meta spokesperson announced that work was underway to solve the problem.

Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages across the globe, has shown a sharp spike in the number of users reporting WhatsApp’s outage.

OmanObserver's social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, received messages mostly from Oman, India, and some African countries such as Kenya, Ghana, and Congo confirming the outage.

Mobile messenger service WhatsApp experienced widespread technical disruptions on Tuesday.

Users of the service in many countries reported on Twitter and other channels that they could no longer send messages.

In Germany, many also reported a breakdown of the WhatsApp platform on the portal Allestörungen.de, which collects information on internet service breakdowns.

The reason for the disruption in several countries was not known.

The service, which belongs to the Facebook group Meta and is widely used around the world, did not initially comment on the outage.

Meta confirmed a global outage was affecting its messaging service WhatsApp on Tuesday and said it was working to restore the app 'as quickly as possible'.

'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,' a Meta spokesman told AFP.

Social media users said they were unable to connect to the app or send messages.

WhatsApp's parent company Meta suffered an unprecedented major outage last year.

WhatsApp stopped working for many people across the world on Tuesday, with users in Asia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Europe reporting issues sending and receiving texts and videos.

Downdetector showed over 68,000 users had reported problems with the app in the United Kingdom. Problems were reported by 19,000 people in Singapore and 15,000 people in South Africa, it said.

The app has become a critical means of communication for households and businesses. When Whatsapp had an hours-long outage last October, it hit trading of assets from cryptocurrencies to oil, before traders switched to alternative platforms such as Telegram.

The 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.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outage may have affected a larger number of users.

'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,' a spokesperson for WhatsApp parent company Meta Platforms said on Tuesday.

#whatsappdown was trending on Twitter, with more than 70000 tweets and hundreds of memes flooding the internet.