911 also down? Users report problems on Downdetector

After the Microsoft outage, X users in the United States are reporting that 911 services are also down. "User reports indicate problems with 911 since 8:34 PM EST," Down detector posted on X. People started reporting the outage at around 7 am ET, with the number of complaints rising from 37 to 177 and nearly 300.

Users reported that the problem was particularly affecting New York. However, there is no official word yet on the matter, or whether the operations have normalised.

The outage came the same day Microsoft was hit by a global outage, with Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other services affected. The biggest AI companies - OpenAI and Anthropic also reported that they were experiencing problems in services linked to Microsoft.

Also Read: Microsoft Outlook and Teams outage continues with tens of thousands affected

The company has been working to fix the problem but is facing a tough time. It confirmed that there was no cyberattack and that the outage was likely caused by issues with the settings applied to servers responsible for keeping Microsoft 365 running.

Japan, Australia report major disruptions

Several countries are reporting that the outage is affecting several areas. Australia, Japan and the United States are among those that reported the problems they are facing because of the Microsoft outage. Japan reported that the outage is causing disruption at companies and government ministries. With no Outlook and other tools available, staff are turning to analogue methods to contact clients and carry out day-to-day tasks. Digital minister, Toshiharu Furukawa, said the government’s email services were not working. So they are now using text messaging as an "emergency measure" for communication.

Meanwhile, Australia said the administrative work at hospitals was affected. Federal government services were also impacted. Microsoft said in its latest update that it was seeing "positive results for server stability" after applying a patch. Its previous efforts went in vain after a large number of servers went offline.