Netflix is currently down for many users around the world

Netflix is currently experiencing outages around the world, but affecting mostly users in the United States and Europe. According to Down Detector, users began reporting issues around 12 PM Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, and many people are still unable to connect to the streaming service on different platforms, including mobile, PCs and smart TVs.

Many people around the world are relying on Netflix for entertainment while under lockdown or quarantine measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. Both Netflix’s status and help pages have notes saying “We are currently experiencing a higher than normal wait time for support via phone and chat. Please try again later or check our online help center for answers to frequently asked questions. Thank you for your patience.” It is also fielding issues through its customer support Twitter account.

On March 21, Netflix said that in response to the European Union’s request for streaming services to use telecommunications networks more efficiently, it had developed a way to reduce Netflix’s traffic on them by 25% and deployed it in Italy, Spain, the rest of the Europe and the United Kingdom before rolling it out to other places including India.