WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Facebook, suffered a widespread global outage on Wednesday that lasted for several hours before being resolved, the company said.
“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologise for the inconvenience,” WhatsApp said in an email late Wednesday afternoon.
WhatsApp was down in many parts of the world. It affected people who use the service on Apple’s iOS operating system, Alphabet’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows mobile OS.
In Brazil, where the professional class relies heavily on the messaging service, WhatsApp was down for about two and a half hours. Many users switched to rival system Telegram, which has picked up millions of customers in Brazil after two previous WhatsApp outages resulting from court orders.
WhatsApp’s is used by more than 1.2 billion people around the world and is a key tool for communications and commerce in many countries. The service was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for US$19 billion.