LONDON, UK – October 20, 2025, 12:30 PM GMT (UPDATED) – Millions across the United Kingdom have been hit by a widespread internet outage this morning, as a catastrophic failure at Amazon Web Services (AWS outage) brought down a significant portion of the web. The massive AWS outage has paralysed popular services from Snapchat to Fortnite, leaving workers unable to log on and smart homes unresponsive.
The issue, which appears to have originated in AWS’s critical US-EAST-1 data centre region in Virginia, USA, has had a severe knock-on effect globally. UK users awoke on Monday to find many of their essential digital tools and entertainment platforms completely inaccessible.
Which Services Are Down? The UK Impact
The scale of the AWS outage is vast, affecting a wide range of services crucial for both work and daily life in the UK. The list of major impacted platforms is growing and includes a startling number of household names.
Confirmed Down/Disrupted Services:
- Social Media & Communication: Snapchat, Perplexity AI.
- E-commerce & Retail: Amazon’s own Amazon.com site, the McDonald’s App, and Whatnot.
- Finance & Banking: Robinhood, Venmo, Coinbase, and Chime.
- Gaming: Fortnite, Roblox, Rainbow Six Siege, PUBG Battlegrounds, and even the daily puzzle Wordle.
- Entertainment & Streaming: Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Apple TV, and Disney+.
- Smart Home & Utilities: Ring, Alexa, and Verizon.
- Productivity & Education: Canva, Duolingo, CollegeBoard, Canvas by Instructure, Slack, Asana and Goodreads.
- News & Media: The New York Times.
- Other Popular Apps: Life360.
“The centralisation of the internet on platforms like AWS means that a single point of failure can now cause a global digital blackout,” commented Dr. Eleanor Vance, a London-based technology analyst. “This AWS outage is a stark wake-up call for businesses who have put all their digital eggs in one basket.”
What Caused the AWS Outage?
While Amazon remains tight-lipped on the specific cause, initial reports from tech experts point towards a major network routing failure within the US-EAST-1 region. This single region is one of the most important hubs for internet traffic in the world. Its failure has created a domino effect, taking down services that are physically hosted thousands of miles from the UK.
Amazon’s official service health dashboard has acknowledged the issue, stating they are “actively working towards resolution,” but has provided no timeline for when the AWS outage will be fixed and services restored.
For now, the UK remains in a state of digital limbo, with the incident highlighting the fragility of the global internet infrastructure. This story is developing, and we will provide updates as they become available.
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