Internet outage in UAE: How AWS disruptions hit popular apps

A massive internet disruption on Monday left users across the world — including in the UAE — unable to access some of the most popular apps and websites, with widespread outages traced to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backbone of much of the internet’s cloud infrastructure.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, multiple major online platforms — including AWS, Robinhood, Snapchat, and Perplexity AI — reported service disruptions throughout the day. The issue appeared to originate from AWS’s US-East-1 region, which hosts critical backend systems for several global apps and websites.

Downdetector recorded more than 2,000 outage incidents for AWS in the United States, with users reporting problems accessing a wide range of apps and services. Amazon’s own ecosystem was also affected — including Amazon.com, Prime Video, and Alexa — as users faced connectivity issues and slow response times.

In the UAE, hundreds of users reported difficulties accessing major online platforms around midday, according to Downdetector.ae. Outage reports began to rise around 11am, peaking shortly after 12:30pm.

The disruption affected several services that rely on AWS infrastructure, temporarily impacting streaming, e-commerce, and communication platforms. AWS engineers said they were “actively working to mitigate the issue and identify the root cause.”

The outage underscored how dependent global digital services have become on Amazon’s cloud network, which powers a vast portion of online platforms. AWS is the world’s largest cloud provider, supporting millions of apps, enterprises, and government services worldwide.

Several widely used apps and platforms in the UAE were disrupted due to the Amazon Web Services outage. Among those affected are Perplexity, Prime Video, Alexa, Canva, Roblox, Fortnite, Apple TV, McDonald’s app, and PUBG Battlegrounds.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud computing division of tech giant Amazon. Its global infrastructure supports millions of websites and apps, including many services running on your smartphone.

In a status update, AWS reported “significant error rates for requests” to one of its endpoints in the US-EAST-1 region.

At 12:34 (local time), the company confirmed: “Increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region.” AWS engineers are “immediately engaged and actively working on both mitigating the issue and fully understanding the root cause.”

AWS engineers continue to work to fully resolve the outage and pinpoint its origin. Users worldwide are advised to check Downdetector sites for live updates and progress on service restoration.

AWS has reported progress in restoring services, saying: “We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests and will provide additional information as available.”

As a reminder, AWS powers the infrastructure behind millions of websites and apps globally. Any disruption can affect popular services and platforms used by millions every day.