BT’s phone and internet services have crashed across the UK over the last hour. Down Detector, a website that tracks internet failures, has been inundated with reports that BT customers all over the country – from London to Birmingham, Manchester to Glasgow – have experienced outages. The faults peaked at around 15:00 (3pm GMT), with 18,399 reports. Many BT websites and services are also down.
BT’s customer care Twitter account claims that the issue is being dealt with, saying, “Sorry if you’re experiencing network problems. Engineers are on site now. We will keep you updated.”
https://twitter.com/BTCare/status/694547101854896128
“It is true that we are down at the moment,” a BT spokesperson later told Sky News. “We are aware of the problems and are working on them as fast as we can.”
Judging by the inevitable Twitter meltdown, the issues began just after 14:00 (2pm GMT), with BT customers complaining:
Anyone else having issues with BT broadband? pic.twitter.com/UuqGDB2of0
— Eric Smith (@eric_rulinmusic) February 2, 2016
Our internet is down. If yours is, too, pop by and lets just eat some cake or something. But bring cash, we can't take cards #bt #internet
— ScandiKitchen 💙 (@Scanditwitchen) February 2, 2016
BT internet reported down across #Salford & #Manchester, BT website too @BTCare
— SalfordOnline (@SalfordOnline) February 2, 2016
https://twitter.com/MikePattinson/status/694535277033984001
https://twitter.com/richypie/status/694535485486698496
The incident is the largest network failure the UK has ever experienced. There is no indication as to what has caused the issue yet, nor hor long it will take to repair.
Reports from users suggest that BT’s customer service has started turning people away while the outage continues. BT customer Jason Mills wrote on Down Detector: “DY2 [Dudley postcode] down but my big problem was when i spoke to BT, not sure where this foreign call centre was but after being informed of an issue and being told to ring back in a few hours before i had chance to speak they hung up. Totally shocked and dissapointed in there actions towards paying customers and will be changing asap!”
