The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

UK hit by major ADSL outage

Colossus broken backbone to blame

  • print
  • alert

Ensure Ease of Recovery with Asigra’s Agentless Software

Britain's broadband ADSL service was plunged into darkness this morning following a catastrophic failure of BT's network.

Details are still sketchy but it's understood that nearly all ADSL connections across the country are down - including those provided by service providers other than BT - along with some unmetered dial-up services.

The Register has received reports from readers that some services have been unaffected by the incident.

Unconfirmed reports claim that BT's Web site, BT.com, was also floored by the outage, although this is now up and running again.

According to a BT spokeswoman, the company has "lost part of its Colossus IP backbone" network.

Early reports suggest the network crashed sometime before 10.00am (GMT). BT engineers are busy trying to fix the problem as quickly as possible, we're told. ®

Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner

More from The Register

1,000 O2 staff chose redundancy over Capita
Betrayal, or just decent terms?
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
EU signs off on eCall emergency-phone-in-every-car plan
GPS and a mobe in every car - do you suppose the NSA would fancy that?
 breaking news
White Space wonga time: White House tips $100m into next-gen comms
Empty frequencies right place for tomorrow's mics, phones and fridges