Networks down - latest: Thousands of UK users reported outages

As it happened

UK internet customers with different suppliers all reported major outages on Thursday morning (PA)

A number of UK internet service providers appeared to suffer disruption on Thursday morning, with BT, Three, EE and Virgin among those thought to be affected.

Website health monitor DownDetector registered thousands of reports from users complaining of connectivity issues.

Customers of Three began to report problems at approximately 5.48am GMT, with more people reporting issues at around 8.00am as the work day began.

“We’re currently experiencing technical issues with some calls,” Three said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Please accept our apologies if you’ve been affected by this, our engineers are working hard to fix it. Check back here for updates.”

The company has since notified customers that its services are “up and running again” and apologised for the disruption.

BT and EE services appeared to suffer from around 11am, with some users struggling to access their email or My EE.

Virgin customers are also understood to have experienced problems but, like those of Three, they now appear to have been fixed.

Key Points

• Three users report major outage
• BT email, My EE not working for thousands of users
• Virgin fixes broadband issues
• Providers ‘working quickly’ to resolve issues
• Three ‘up and running again’

[14 October 2021 12:45 · Joe Sommerlad]

Good afternoon and welcome to The Independent’s coverage of the internet outages currently hitting some of the UK’s biggest broadband providers.

[14 October 2021 12:51 · Joe Sommerlad]

Three users report major outage

A number of UK internet service providers appeared to drop out on Thursday morning, with BT, Three, EE and Virgin among those thought to be affected.

Website health monitor DownDetector registered thousands of reports from users complaining of being unable to connect to broadband internet.

Three users began to report problems at approximately 5.48am GMT, with more people reporting issues at around 8.00am as the work day began.

“We’re currently experiencing technical issues with some calls,” Three said in a statement posted on Twitter. “Please accept our apologies if you’ve been affected by this, our engineers are working hard to fix it. Check back here for updates.”

Here’s the latest from Anthony Cuthbertson.

[14 October 2021 13:00 · Joe Sommerlad]

BT email, My EE not working for thousands of users

BT and EE services appeared to suffer from around 11am, with some users struggling to access their email or My EE.

BT customers expressed their frustrations on social media, claiming not to be able to access websites or emails.

“I can’t get on to ‘My BT’,” one wrote. “I can’t log in to the BT website for my emails, is your server system down?”

Here’s Anthony Cuthbertson again with more on the situation.

[14 October 2021 13:15 · Joe Sommerlad]

Virgin resolves broadband issues

According to DownDetector, Virgin Media appears to have successfully resolved its issues this morning.

The picture is much less rosy for the other providers, however.

[14 October 2021 13:36 · Joe Sommerlad]

Providers ‘working quickly’ to resolve issues accessing BT email and My EE

BT and EE say their broadband internet services are not disrupted by this morning’s issues but acknowledge that some customers have been having trouble accessing BT email and My EE respectively:

Here are their statements:

An EE spokesperson said: “Some customers are experiencing problems trying to use their My EE, and we’re working quickly to resolve this. EE broadband, mobile and data services are not affected. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

A BT spokesperson: “Some customers are experiencing problems trying to use their BT email, and we’re working quickly to resolve this. BT phone, broadband and mobile services are not affected. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

[14 October 2021 13:59 · Joe Sommerlad]

Three ‘up and running again’

Here’s the latest from Three, which says its services are now back on track and apologises for disruption this AM.

[14 October 2021 14:40 · Joe Sommerlad]

Customers vent on Twitter over service disruption

Here’s what users were saying on social media today regarding the outages.

[14 October 2021 15:26 · Joe Sommerlad]

‘Facebook’s outage was a wake-up call for businesses’

While this morning’s events might have been mighty annoying for many, particularly for those still working from home, last week’s Facebook outage was far more severe and, aside from costing the company millions of dollars in revenue, also provided us with a valuable demonstration of just how reliant we have become upon the web and how ill-equipped we are for being without it.

James Moore has this.

[14 October 2021 16:10 · Joe Sommerlad]

Solar superstorm could plunge the world into ‘internet apocalypse’

Not had enough web-related anguish for one day?

Vishwam Sankaran has a story to tell you, beginning all the way back on 15 May 1921 and leading on to a future geomagnetic threat we are so not ready for.

[14 October 2021 16:45 · Joe Sommerlad]

‘We are digitally addicted’

That was the conclusion of UCLA’s Dr Ramesh Srinivasan, an expert on Big Tech, after last week’s Facebook outage.

Here’s what else he had to say about our increasing dependence on glowing screens.