WhatsApp has been restored after an hour-long outage disconnected billions of users following a global downtime on Tuesday morning.

While users of the instant messaging app in Nigeria observed the downtime about an hour ago, around 8am, the effect was felt across teh world leaving millions of reactions on Twitter as users engaged rival messaging app Telegram for communication.

Smartphone users with iPhone, Android phones, Windows Mobile or Blackberry on the cross-platform mobile messaging app have been unable to send and receive messages, photos, and other information.

WhatsApp which is considered an alternative to text messages or SMS, has about 2 billion users in over 100 countries.

Confirming the glitch, a Meta Platforms spokesman said on Tuesday, “We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble sending messages and we’re working to restore WhatsApp for everyone as quickly as possible.” Users are even complaining about issues with the calling feature on WhatsApp.

“The app is not going past the ‘calling’ phase to the ringing phase. WhatsApp has undergone a similar outage last year in October. WhatsApp users are also turning to Twitter to report the outage. Considering the wide range of outages, this could be one of the worst episodes for the instant messaging application.”

However, after over an hour, this publication can confirm that the instant messaging app restored connectivity to its 2 billion users around 9:56 am Nigerian time.

WhatsApp users can now connect with their loved ones as well as business associates in over 100 countries.

In a statement, Meta said the problem had been resolved.

“We know people had trouble sending messages on WhatsApp today,” the statement said.

“We have fixed the issue and apologise for any inconvenience.”