Thousands of Virgin Media and Sky broadband customers are left without internet as massive outage strikes across the UK
- Broadband outages hit customers of both providers during Thursday morning
- Twitter users are furious about the outage, which is affecting home and business
- Sky said last night it would be conducting maintenance in towns east of London
Virgin Media customers in their thousands have been left without internet or phone access on Thursday morning due to a massive outage affecting parts of England.
Customer reports of broadband problems surged over night before reached a high of around 4,300 by 11am, according to independent service outage monitor website Down Detector.
Home and businesses alike have been affected by the outage, which appears to have particularly badly affected parts of the south, including London and Southampton.
The network operator is reportedly scrambling to investigate the cause of the dropout and is working on a quick fix.
Sky broadband and fibre broadband customers have also been affected by an outage on Thursday.
Virgin Media spent Thursday morning apologising to customers for the issue, which it is working to fix as soon as possible
Outage maps from Down Detector also show properties further north that have been affected, including Manchester, Nottingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The complaints from Virgin Media customers appear to have started to climb dramatically from about 6am Thursday morning
‘We are aware of an issue affecting services for customers in Southampton and some surrounding areas,’ Virgin Media said in a statement to MailOnline.
‘We are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience.’
The company did not confirm what is causing the outage or when it will be fixed.
Outage maps from Down Detector also show properties further north that have been affected, including Manchester, Nottingham, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Virgin Media customers took to social media to complain about the outage, which has also affected businesses.
‘When you run a business from home, this s**ts a death sentence,’ tweeted @CamReadman.
Virgin is reportedly scrambling to investigate the cause of the dropout, which is affecting services in Southampton and elsewhere
‘Any news on when service will be resumed? No communication and no idea when i will have what i PAY MONEY FOR. Its a joke. I missed the England rugby game weekend before last too!! I want compensation and some idea when its gonna be fixed,’ tweeted @elainecotter.
Another Twitter user said that it had been nearly 12 hours since their internet had gone down and Virgin Media had had ‘last night to resolve this issue’.
The official Virgin Media account replied: ‘We are aware of an issue affecting services for customers in Southampton and some surrounding areas.
‘We are working to fix the issue as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience.’
The Sky outage chart from Down Detector shows reports peaked just before midnight last night but rose again to 687 at about 7:15am
Sky customers have been badly hit around the south coast, especially in Southampton and Portsmouth
Sky listed areas east of London that would be affected by scheduled maintenance, although more areas including in and around Portsmouth appear to be affected too
As for Sky, the company had tweeted last night that it will be conducting essential maintenance that may affect services throughout the small hours.
‘Due to essential maintenance customers in the following areas may experience an intermittent or complete loss of Broadband and Talk service on the 5th of March at 00:00 until 06:00,’ it said, followed by a list of locations.
However, Sky broadband went down in some areas that the company didn’t even list, including Portsmouth, according to one customer.
Sky later confirmed that customers may not be able to make or receive calls in South East England, the Isle of Wight and Nottinghamshire.
Engineers continue to work hard but due to a significant break in the south east, Sky said, but ‘the fix is taking longer than hoped’.
It expects to have the issue – caused by a fibre-cable break – fixed just after lunchtime Thursday.