BT Suffered Major Broadband Outage
A "power failure" at a major UK exchange in Birmingham saw huge numbers of BT Broadband customers across the UK cut off yesterday including some of our own clients. But all Brick websites and servers were 100% up despite having no office broadband.
BT said those affected numbered hundreds of thousands - about 5% of its total customers.
Business users were particularly badly affected, with many reporting considerable lost revenue as a result.
BT said the service has now been fully restored, advising customers to "turn their hub or modem off and on again".
The first reports of lost connections began to appear at about 1pm on Monday.
By 3pm many customers on consumer packages reported being able to gain access, but business customers had to endure longer delays.
In a statement, the company said: "We can confirm that, as a result of a power failure at one of our major exchanges, some customers may have experienced loss of broadband service for a brief period this afternoon.
We have been doing our very best to keep customers informed.” Which is surprising because there wasn't even an automated message on the phone numbers we rang. The phones just kept ringing and ringing.
BT say that now all services have now been restored, with the majority of BT's consumer broadband customers' service being restored within just one hour.
"Some business customers' broadband service may have been affected for a slightly longer period. Should any customers continue to experience difficulty in accessing their broadband service, they are advised to turn their hub or modem off and on again."
Many businesses contacted Brick technology to vent their frustration at the service, suggesting today's problems have had a serious impact on sales.
James Shannon Brick technology's operations manager, said: "It is really frustrating for our clients especially so the e-commerce customers as we are all so reliant on the internet.
When James eventually got a recorded message... was BT advising customers to logon to BT.com if they can't get through on the phone - "not easy logging in without an internet connection!"
"We were unable to get hold of BT for confirmation and had to rely on Twitter for unconfirmed updates."
In response, BT has said they had received a "large number of calls" and were doing their best to handle queries using social media and other methods.
"We have been doing our very best to keep customers informed," the spokesperson added. Everything seems back to normal today for our web design lancashire clients... (fingers crossed).
"BT apologises for any inconvenience caused."