Internet outages hit East Coast, causing trouble for remote work, school

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Angela Lang/CNET

Widespread internet outages appeared to hit much of the northern East Coast on Tuesday, with reports of issues coming in from Boston to Washington, DC. Problems were reported for multiple services, including Zoom, Google Meet and Amazon Web Services, according to outage monitoring site DownDetector. However, issues may be linked to a larger internet service disruption, with some impacted customers pointing to Verizon Fios.

The Verizon support account on Twitter noted that a fiber cable had been cut in Brooklyn, New York, possibly contributing to some of the issues reported Tuesday. Verizon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

AWS, which provides cloud and other services for many websites, said in a status update Tuesday that it was “investigating connectivity issues with an internet provider” mainly affecting the East Coast. The company said issues started to resolve around 10:05 a.m. ET.

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also took note of the internet outages.

“We have seen reports of internet-related outages on the East Coast, making it difficult for people to work remotely and go to school online,” Rosenworcel said in a tweet Tuesday. “The @FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is working to get to the bottom of what is going on.”

The internet outages disrupted remote work and virtual learning, which continue in many areas because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Schools in Maryland, Virginia and other areas on the East Coast reported internet issues, noting that students may have trouble accessing sites used for virtual learning. 

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