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The software glitch that brought chaos to BT phone lines also crippled the network used by schools plugging into the Government's National Grid for Learning (NGfL). The service has been so disrupted that some schools are calling for compensation. Earlier this week BT denied that the outage that affected emergency services, banks and ISPs on Friday had any impact on the NGfL. A spokesman for BT insisted he was unaware of any problem with the 0820 service. But The Register has discovered that schools in Devon and the West Country were hit. Reports indicate that this was not an isolated problem. Exeter-based Eclipse Networking, which services 400 schools in Devon and the West Country, has received more than a hundred complaints over the last couple of days from teachers saying that they are unable to use the service. And it's believed this is only the tip of the iceberg since many calls will have been routed directly to local education authorities. "The problems have been intermittent since Monday," said Jomie Carmichael of Eclipse. "It appears to have righted itself slightly today so touch wood, it'll be okay," she said. Thousands of schools up and down the country pay £790 a year for a single line providing toll-free access to the Net between 8am and 6pm. The only consolation for BT is that the main outage occurred on Friday during half term. ® Related Stories BT network crash caused by software BT struggles to cope with massive network failure BT network falls over

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