New research from Downdetector, a website for reporting outages and owned by Speedtest.net owner Ookla, has found that Microsoft 365 and Facebook outages in March were the most impactful such events in 2024 across Africa and the Middle East.
Downdetector analysed data between the first and third quarters of 2024 to draw up a list of the “largest outages of 2024 at a global level and sorted by region”.
The Microsoft and Facebook outages were global events that affected not only the region, but users across the world.
Facebook’s 5 March outage was the biggest such event worldwide this year, according to the Downdetector report – which is surprising given the global headlines that the July incident, which affected millions of Windows computers, drew. The Crowdstrike event, which temporarily bricked PCs, requiring a manual fix, is second in Downdetector’s global list, following by an AT&T outage in the US in February and an Instagram outage in March.
The third most-reported outage in Africa and the Middle East – after the Microsoft and Facebook incidents – involved Telkom, with almost 55 000 users reporting issues on 13 May.
MTN and Vodacom are other telecommunications providers that made the list of top outages in the region.
“Outage patterns in the Middle East and Africa differed from those in other regions with users reporting about as many issues with local sites and services as global ones.”
Rounding out the top five in the region were a WhatsApp outage in April and problems affecting MTN South Africa in July. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media
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