Thousands of Virgin Media customers across the UK experienced widespread internet, telephone and TV outages throughout Tuesday.
Downdetector, which tracks outages, said around 50,000 people had reported problems with their services at one point, with the glitch first noticed by some customers shortly after 1am BST.
The cause was not immediately clear but wreaked havoc for customers, including those relying on internet and phone connections for work. By late morning the worst of the issues had been resolved.
Looks like #virginmedia is having issues nationwide. One of those rare instances where working from home becomes problematic
— Chris Scullion (@scully1888) April 4, 2023
“Looks like Virgin Media is having issues nationwide. One of those rare instances where working from home becomes problematic,” one Twitter user said.
“I’m self-employed and work from home. Who at your company shall I invoice for the money I will lose today while your internet service is down?” another tweeted.
However, by the afternoon there were reports the service was down again. In a statement, a Virgin Media spokesperson said: “Unfortunately, we have seen a repeat of an earlier issue which is causing intermittent broadband connectivity problems for some Virgin Media customers.
“We apologise again to those customers impacted and our teams are continuing to work flat out to find the root cause of the problem and fix it.”
The outage was widespread enough that Virgin Media’s corporate website was unavailable for several hours on Tuesday morning. Even after it was restored, the company had to serve all users the mobile version of the site, which was apparently being rebuilt on the fly.
The company’s online FAQ promises customers compensation for total outages but only on a per-day basis, suggesting it may be at Virgin Media’s discretion as to whether to pay out for a sub-day failure.
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Some users reported being able to reconnect to the internet after a reboot of their router or modem, while others found their connection could be restored by connecting through a virtual private network.
That workaround may point to where the wider problems lie, since it is similar to glitches such as those that knocked Facebook offline in 2021, and were the result of a flaw in the deep-level routing systems that allow internet services to connect to each other.
Adding to the pain, the outage comes just three days after Virgin Media hit customers with a 13.8% price rise, adding almost £7 to the cost of a typical £50 broadband and TV package.
The increase, which is above inflation, is typical for the broadband sector, which has been criticised by the consumer rights group Which? and is the focus of an Ofcom investigation.
