A service outage is a period in which a service or a defined part of it is unavailable. Its scope can be limited to particular functions, regions or infrastructure rather than every user. A household playback failure can be a symptom worth reporting, but it does not by itself establish a confirmed service-wide outage or its cause.
A practical example
A provider may confirm that a particular account-management function is unavailable while existing media sessions continue. Describing that scope accurately helps customers understand which actions are affected without assuming every channel, website page and login process shares one identical failure.
A common misunderstanding
Do not declare a universal outage from one device or one social message. Compare relevant symptoms and use the responsible service's confirmed information when describing the incident to other customers.
Related terms
General operational definition; actual service terms remain separate. Editorial approach