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Widespread internet outages hit northeast US

Washington - Verizon said it was working on the problem hurting Fios service.

Internet users across the northeast US reported widespread outages on Tuesday.

In an emailed statement 90 minutes after the outage was first reported, Verizon said it was working on the problem hurting Fios service “throughout the Northeast corridor” and that some service had already been restored.

The telecom giant had reported a cut fiber in Brooklyn via Twitter, although it’s not clear if that issue was responsible for the entire outage. Verizon didn’t give any estimate in its email about when the problem would be fixed.

Comcast, another major internet service provider, said its network was performing normally in the early afternoon on the East Coast.

People posting on Twitter reported having issues connecting with various online services in a geographic area stretching from Washington to Boston. That densely populated region includes key U.S. government services as well as major financial companies such as Fidelity Investments.

The outage is affecting major internet and cloud providers as well as major sites such as Google and Facebook.

Amazon, whose web services division powers a wide ranges of online services, indicated its network isn’t the cause of the problem.

“We are investigating connectivity issues with an internet provider, mainly affecting the East Coast of the United States, outside of the (Amazon Web Services) Network,” the company wrote in a Tuesday morning post. “We are investigating the issue with the external provider.”

Google said it also had not found issues with its own services and was investigating.

The East Coast outages began at 11:25am local time and recovery began at 12:37pm, according to Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentic, a network monitoring company. He reported a 12% drop in traffic volume to Verizon.

Madory said he did not yet know if other carriers were impacted.

Disruptions to internet services are always a hassle, but have become even more excruciating as the pandemic forces millions of people to work from home and students to attend school remotely.

“Widespread internet outages in the area impacting remote learning today,” Galvin Middle School in Wakefield, Massachusetts lamented in a tweet. “Stay patient and do best you can. It’s out of our control. Hopefully things will be resolved soon!”