BT suffers huge broadband failure across much of UK

BT suffers huge broadband failure across much of UK(bbc.co.uk)

9 points by sami_b 14 years ago | 12 comments

rlpb 14 years ago |

"Business users were particularly badly affected, with many reporting considerable lost revenue as a result."

It's a shame that these businesses that have so much hinging on their Internet connections don't have any kind of backup line arranged.

n3m3sis 14 years ago | |

I work for one of those businesses and we were affected. The reason we didn't have a backup line, is because the other major ISP (Virgin) doesn't have its fibre in our region. Therefore, BT is our only option.

rlpb 14 years ago | | |

Have you considered 3G

Edit: you could also consider a backup line from an LLU provider. You still have the copper as a single point of failure, and perhaps power at the exchange, but the infrastructure is different.

pbhjpbhj 14 years ago | |

Getting a second non BT line would probably cost some companies their entire revenue.

n3m3sis 14 years ago | | |

Not exactly true, the non-BT option is primarily Virgin. Virgin has a pretty good infrastructure (at home I have 50Mbps broadband from them) and generally they are cheaper. BT on the other hand is more expensive. If available I'm sure businesses would select Virgin. But we (I work for one business that is stuck with BT) have no option but BT because Virgin doesn't have its fibre in our region.

While BT runs over telephone wires. Therefore is more pervasive in the UK.

Tyrannosaurs 14 years ago |

We had downtime yesterday because of this - massive outbreak of actual work in the office as a result.

pluies 14 years ago |

"BT said the service has now been fully restored, advising customers to "turn their hub or modem off and on again"."

So Roy works at BT now!

makethetick 14 years ago |

Mine was out for 4.5 hours yesterday. They seem to be down playing the outage, the paper this morning mentioned that it was out for only an hour or so.

When I spoke to a support guy yesterday he said that 30% of their network was out and this was 4 hours into the outage.

toypaj 14 years ago | |

Yeah, I was told by a support guy that between 25-30% of BT users were affected.

We managed with iPad 3G with MiWi tethered to iMac via WiFi and then sharing connection from iMac via Ethernet!

n3m3sis 14 years ago | | |

We survived with multiple 3-MiFis.

samarudge 14 years ago |

Down again this morning for us, at 8AM we lost connection and (at 12:50) still haven't got it back. Routing our connection through our DR site.

Edit @ 13:50, back up, but so slow it's making doing anything impossible, still routing through DR site

kgutteridge 14 years ago |

Using 3G as my local exchange is actually out, sad that so many businesses did not have a backup if they are dependent on a single point of failure for revenue.