The outage, which began around 12:30pm, appears to be linked to a major outage affecting Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.
Microsoft 365 posted a notice acknowledging the issue, stating that users in the EMEA region, particularly in South Africa and the United Kingdom, were experiencing difficulties accessing Microsoft 365 services.
According to reports from Downdetector, an outage tracker, users across multiple internet service providers, including Vodacom, Mweb, Openserve, Seacom, Telkom, Vumatel and Vox, reported issues with internet access and online services.
Many Vodacom customers also reported mobile data outages in various parts of the country.
Also read: Sale of SAA to Takatso Consortium called off, announces Gordhan
High-profile online services affected by the outage include FNB, LinkedIn, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Twitter and Xbox. Users across South Africa reported disruptions, with outage maps indicating widespread impact.
Initial investigations have pointed to a Microsoft Azure data centre experiencing a significant outage in South Africa. Yoco cited Microsoft Azure’s outage as the reason for its inability to process payments.
Microsoft has assured users that they are actively investigating the networking issue.