Facebook, Google & Zero1 users left frustrated by outages
Billions of users worldwide affected by disruptions a day after Google was hit
Over just two days, Singaporeans were hit by at least three long outages affecting their ability to access various online services.
After disruptions hit global tech firm Google on Wednesday, Facebook and local virtual telco Zero1 saw their services go down for several hours yesterday.
Part-time food delivery rider Johan Fayd Kamal Doral, 22, said Zero1's network outage cost him about $70 in lost income as he did not have a data connection and could not accept any jobs.
The polytechnic student told The New Paper yesterday that he realised he could not connect to the Internet or make any calls at about 10.30am.
"It was a total disruption."
A Zero1 Facebook post apologising for the outage garnered more than 150 comments, with customers saying they experienced issues with calls, data services and text messaging as early as 8.30am.
At about 3pm, the company, which leases its physical mobile networks from Singtel, said in an update that its services were restored and a power outage at its data centre was the cause.
Mr Johan said he could start work only more than three hours into his 12-hour shift.
"I was frustrated and, of course, angry. Attendance is (taken) through the app and if I don't sign in, my attendance record will drop."
Zero1 did not respond by press time to queries on how many people were affected, but it was previously reported that the company hoped to sign up 50,000 subscribers in its first year of operation.
Its customers were not the only ones affected yesterday.
More than two billion users of Facebook were also left frustrated, after the social network suffered an outage believed to be its worst.
Across the globe, users complained about being unable to log in to their accounts, load posts, or send and receive messages, The Straits Times reported.
US news channel CNN said the "epic" disruption, which also impacted three other services that Facebook owns - Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger - lasted more than 14 hours, with the BBC reporting that issues began around midnight Singapore time.
The outage started abating yesterday afternoon, Singapore time, and at about 12.40pm, image-sharing service Instagram tweeted that it was back up and running.
The outages yesterday followed a four-hour disruption that hit several Google services on Wednesday, including Gmail and Google Drive, across both workplace G Suite accounts and personal Google accounts.
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