Zoom videoconferencing down in China

[mungouk]

For those of you who use Zoom rather than Skype for videoconferencing and online lessons, FYI zoom.us is currently unreachable from mainland China supposedly due to a DNS issue, so you are unable to connect unless you use a VPN:

 

(https://status.zoom.us/)

 

Hopefully this "DNS issue" will be resolved and doesn't turn out to be pre-October 1st paranoia (or worse) resulting in it being blocked.

 

Skype is currently still working for me, but I find I get better connections with Zoom.

 

 

[mungouk]

Well, it took a while, but Zoom is now working again.

 

EDIT: "working"?  Well...

 

It seems they've added new features for China including mobile number verification which may or may not work (via a PIN code).

 

But the "chat" button is greyed out and says it's been "disabled by your admin".

 

So my teacher and couldn't manage to get a "meeting" going. Shame because it was always much better quality than Skype when we used it, and the screen sharing worked better/used less CPU.  

 

There's also a zoom.com.cn website now which has all the official-looking numbers at the bottom of the page.

 

Oh well... still hopeful.

 

 

[mackie1402]

Did Zoom ever end up working again? I just found out that the online Uni I study at is changing to Zoom next semester (half way through the degree), and the lecturer even mentioned when she tried to test it in China it just didn't connect. 

 

[mungouk]

I don't know... I tried it again with my teacher a couple of days ago but she couldn't get it to work.

 

There's now a mobile phone verification step when you start up the program (presumably just the first time), and she was unable to receive the PIN code.

 

I received it and verified my account no problem. 

 

I can see when my teacher's online, but when I initiate a call she can see it but not accept it.  Similarly when she sees me in the contact list, the MEET button is greyed out.

 

I only actually have one contact, my teacher, so that's as far as I can go right now.

 

 

[mungouk]

After 6 weeks I just got a reply from Zoom support about the chat button being greyed out:

 

Quote

Thank you for contacting Zoom Support! I am so sorry for the delay in our response to your email! At this time, the chat is disabled in China. I am so sorry for the inconvenience. We plan to make it available, however, there is no timeline to when it will be available. 

 

[大块头]

Were these issues ever resolved?

[mungouk]

Yes, I've been using Zoom for work meetings and for Chinese classes within the mainland and overseas since at least October 2020 with no issues.

 

I find it generally has better connectivity than Skype, i.e less freezing, dropped calls etc.

 

FWIW my teacher still can't initiate a meeting for some reason, but I can.  So we do it that way.

 

The chat feature works fine, and I appreciate the setting to auto-save the chat as a text file when you quit a "meeting", since in my lessons it tends to be full of vocab and explanations my teacher has written.