Update: Virgin Media broadband is back online after an outage earlier today, leaving thousands of users without internet access.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said:
The issue which affected some customers’ broadband services this morning has now been fixed. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’
Recent stats from a Quadient survey of 2,000 UK adults highlights the wider problem for remote workers:
- 8.5 million UK households have experienced internet problems, disrupting their work or personal lives over the course of the lockdown.
- 66 per cent of us have been relying on online services more during lockdown – so having a problem with your internet connection will be a bigger issue than before.
- UK consumers rank internet as the third most important service in their lives, above key utilities and banking. They would even rate using the internet for something like streaming a movie than having a gas supply to heat their home, showing the public would literally choose to ‘Netflix and chill’.
Andrew Stevens, Principal, Customer Experience at Quadient commented:
“Internet access has arguably never been more important to UK consumers than during the Covid-19 lockdown. Having your WiFi go down in the middle of the working week will pose problems for the huge numbers of us currently working from home. As WiFi becomes increasingly important, providers must deal with any connection issues quickly and effectively – and the customer experience plays a key role.
UK consumers will accept there are likely to be connectivity problems during these unprecedented times. However, telecommunications providers must meet them halfway: not only resolving the issue, but giving customers timely and personalised information, advice and support they need.”
Users across the UK are suffering from broadband issues after Virgin Media suffered a broadband outage. At around 8am this morning more than 1,400 users reported problems with broadband and mobile phone internet on the Down Detector website, causing serious disruption to the masses working from home in the UK.
The problems seem to have hit Brits across the country, with reports coming from Glasgow, Cambridgeshire, Manchester, Brighton and London.
Some have said they can’t access the service page on the Virgin Media website where you can check for issues in their area.
Unlike many other internet service providers, Virgin Media has its own infrastructure and does not use the Openreach network. As a result, customers on BT, TalkTalk, Sky or other networks were unaffected.
With thousands of Virgin customers left without access to the internet, it had a knock-on effect on other services.
For example, there was a spike in reported problems with workplace tools such as Microsoft, Outlook, Teams, Slack, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and LinkedIn.
The sites themselves were working fine, it was just the Virgin internet they rely on that crashed.
Entertainment tools such as Netflix and Xbox Live also had reported issues.
A spokesperson from Virgin Media said an engineer is working on the issue.
