Worldwide Zoom outage disrupts government business

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The popular videoconferencing platform Zoom had a roughly 30-minute global outage out at around 9 a.m. Hawaii with 59,000 users worldwide reporting issues.

The outage impacted businesses worldwide, and caused behind-the-scenes frustrations in Hawaii.

The Honolulu City Council delayed the start of its full council hearing Wednesday morning while the State Ethics Commission canceled its meeting “due to Zoom connection disruptions.”

“We can’t testify online and submit testimony because the Zoom network is down,” said Angela Melody Young, an education and housing advocate.

“It just shows how much we rely on technology and we have to stop everything. The whole world stopped and we couldn’t move along with our council meeting,” said Augie Tulba, District 9 council member.

A hacker group reportedly claimed responsibility while Zoom said it was facing server issues and was investigating domain name resolution issues.

“We’ve became dependent on it and so that’s why it maybe it causes a lot of concern and anxiety,” said community advocate Kehaulani Lum.

Lum drove from Aiea to testify in person instead of testifying online.

“People feel that they can do more because you have the capacity to stay home but you lose the connectivity heart to heart and maybe this is a good reminder to us,” she said.

“The council was fully prepared to implement alternative measures for today’s remote full council hearing to uphold its commitment to transparency, public engagement, and responsible governance,” said Honolulu City Council chair Tommy Waters.