Major London problem hits BT broadband across southeast

Updated BT is struggling to get its broadband service up and running in parts of the capital and across the southeast of England this afternoon, after the telecoms giant was hit by a massive outage.

The company has coughed to a "serious incident" and is currently broadcasting its woes on Twitter.

BT is in fact fielding messages from frustrated customers regarding no less than four different outages; the one in London and the surrounding areas appeared to be the most serious.

Some reports trickling through suggest that BT's Faraday telephone exchange is the culprit. The issue at that exchange is said to be "affecting circuits primarily across the southeast of the UK across multiple ISPs".

It's understood that some customers in London have been unable to access the broadband network since mid-morning today, and many are extremely peeved at the disruption.

The Register asked BT to explain what had gone wrong. The company hadn't got back to us with comment at time of writing, however. ®

Updated to Add

BT has evidently managed to get their own office broadband turned back on at least. A company spokesperson has now supplied us with the following statement:

This morning, an equipment failure in Sheffield resulted in the loss off broadband service for some BT Retail residential and business customers, as well as a loss of service at some BT Wi-fi hotspots. This has now been resolved and services are being restored. Customers still experiencing problems may find that by turning their BT Hub off and on again, their broadband will work again.

Another, unrelated equipment failure in London has resulted in loss of broadband services for a number of BT Retail customers, we are currently working to resolve this.