BT's broadband service crashes and burns

Massive network failure hits business punters

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 14th January 2005 15:31 GMT

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BT's broadband service went titsup this afternoon following a massive network failure.

Details are still sketchy but it's understood that half of BT's business punters and almost all of its business and consumer dial-up users were hit by the outage, which kicked-off shortly after midday.

According to the latest information from BT, the problems that affected dial-up punters have now been resolved. And because not all of BT's business broadband users were online at the time, it's now estimated that around 70,000 broadband connections which were live at the time were downed this afternoon.

BT's residential broadband users are understood not to have been hit by the snafu.

The Register has received a number of calls from readers who report that their service has been torpedoed. Others report that some of BT's websites have also been hit by the snag.

A BT spokesman said the situation was improving steadily with six in ten users currently back online.

"We're progressively recovering the situation," he said. The remainder of punters floored by the outage should be back online over the next few hours, he added. ®