BT Broadband and Plusnet customers are facing a second day without internet access, as the UK’s largest internet service provider, and its competitors, struggle with further power issues.
After a day of disruption on Wednesday, which saw 10% of BT’s 9 million customers’ internet usage affected for hours, the ISP has been struggling to maintain normal service again this morning, leading users to vent frustration on social media.
A BT spokesperson said: “We’re sorry that some BT and Plusnet customers are having problems connecting to some internet services this morning. This is due to Telehouse North, one of our internet connection partners in the Docklands, suffering a substantial power failure. This is affecting BT and other providers.
“We are redirecting traffic to reduce the impact on customers and the issue is now affecting less than 5% of customers’ internet usage. Engineers are on site and we hope will be able to fix the problem shortly.”
A Telehouse spokesperson said: “We are aware that there has been an issue with the tripping of a circuit breaker within Telehouse North that has affected a specific and limited group of customers within the building. The problem has been investigated and the solution identified. Our engineers are working with our customers on the resolution right now.”
BT.com and BT’s service tracker were experiencing intermittent outages, preventing users from seeing the areas affected or resolution status. TalkTalk’s status page was also unavailable.
The website Down Detector received reports of outages starting at about 6.00 am on Thursday from across the country and steadily climbing as users attempted to log on.
The second consecutive day of internet access disruption comes two days after a warning from MPs that BT must “put its house in order” or face a break-up after failing to invest in its Openreach network arm, potentially in the region of hundreds of millions of pounds a year. BT said Tuesday that it had invested more than £1bn a year in its infrastructure.
Openreach provides more than 25m telecoms lines across the UK between the company’s exchanges and homes and businesses and services BT Broadband, Plusnet and other competitors such as TalkTalk and Sky. Ofcom, the UK’s telecoms regulator, is due to decide whether Openreach should be split from the rest of BT, which now owns the UK’s largest mobile phone provider EE.
A BT spokesperson said later: “Internet usage is now back to normal for consumer and small business customers. A small number of larger businesses may still be experiencing some limited internet access. Engineers should have these fixed soon.”