Power failure leads to BTo blackout

BT Openworld went titsup yesterday afternoon after power problems at a data centre in Ealing crippled the service.

One reader was told by tech support that BT Openwoe's ADSL service was "down for half the country" yesterday afternoon hitting both home and business users.

Unfortunately, no one at BT Openwound was available to comment on the size and scale of the problem. However, in a statement, BT's ISP said: "Just after 1500 today (Monday 16 June), BT suffered at power outage at its Ealing Data Centre.

"The source of the incident has been traced to a point between the main power feed and its narrowband and ADSL servers. The cause of the power outage remains under investigation. This source of the short circuit was downstream from the backup generators, which would have otherwise compensated for an external power failure.

"During the incident, narrowband customers were re-routed to gateways at other data centres, but regrettably some customers experienced delays re-connecting to the service.

"All servers were restored at 1600, at which time the servers were brought back online. The servers then climbed back to full service, with slight delays caused by the necessary authentication of all users."

News that BT's ISP went titsup yesterday coincided with the announcement that the monster telco was pensioning off BT Overandout in favour of a new relationship with Yahoo!.

Under that arrangement, BT will provide broadband access while Yahoo! will supply the content.

While the industry mulls over exactly what this will mean, Ovum analyst Jan Dawson already has a few ideas.

"The BT Yahoo! Broadband model will set the tone for the future of broadband in Europe. The model is already established in the US, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes prevalent in Europe.

"BT's move will make it much harder for all alternative broadband ISPs to get an edge, and may well lead to AOL dropping its pretensions to being a broadband access provider. BT's market share will rise as both BT Broadband and BT Yahoo! Broadband stimulate further take up for the incumbent," said Dawson. ®

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