Netflix Blames Xmas Eve Outage on Amazon's Cloud

Internet streaming service restored on Tuesday

By MCN Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/26/2012 9:09:53 AM

Netflix said its Internet streaming service for subscribers across the Americas region was knocked offline Dec. 24 -- before being restored Christmas morning -- because of problems with Amazon.com's hosting services, according to reports.

Netflix customers across the U.S., Canada and Latin America were affected by the outage, which began at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Monday, Reuters reported. The cause was an outage at an Amazon Web Services data center in Northern Virginia, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Amazon Web Services outage was at least the third major outage for Amazon Web Services this year, theJournal reported. Amazon offers an online video service, Prime Instant Videos, to members of its free-shipping program that is competitive with Netflix's video service.