BT broadband crash toll rises to 10,000

Telco working to clear upgrade backlog

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Broadband, 10th September 2004 10:28 GMT

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Some 10,000 people were hit by BT's "systems failure" on Monday delaying orders for people hooking up to broadband.

A spokeswoman for the UK's dominant fixed-line telco was still unable to say how many of the 10,000 were left without broadband access because of the problem.

For new broadband punters, the outage would have simply resulted in a delay in getting DSL. For existing users looking to regrade from 512k to 1Mb, the glitch meant they were left without broadband for several days as they were disconnected from their existing service but not reconnected to the higher speed package.

The systems failure has now been resolved and BT is working to clear the backlog of orders, although at this stage there is no estimate as to when the work will be completed.

BT is expected to email ISPs later today with an update on the situation. ®