TalkTalk down: Internet and broadband not working as users struggle to access network

TalkTalk internet has stopped working properly, with users unable to get online.

Tracking website Down Detector showed a dramatic spike in the number of people reporting issues with the internet service provider.

The company claims the problem has since been fixed.

"We're aware that some customers were unable to access certain websites for a short period earlier today," a spokesperson said. "The issue has now been resolved and we apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."

The outage came as users across the country rely on their connections to work and study from home. While the internet infrastructure has stayed largely stable despite the new working patterns, any outage can very quickly cause widespread problems.

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Problems were reported right across the country, according to Down Detector. While the area around London, Cardiff and Birmingham saw the most reports, that is likely to be simply a result of where most people are trying to get online.

TalkTalk's status website suggested that all of its services, including broadband, were still online. "We've no reported issues with Broadband right now," a message on the site read.

But the company's official Twitter page was being sent a flurry of reports, to which it replied with apologies and sent users back to that service status page.

It had not sent out any public tweet acknowledging the issues or giving any indication of when they might be fixed.

Earlier this month, regulator Ofcom said that internet speeds were largely performing as normal, despite some high-profile outages.

Download speeds have dropped only 2 per cent, despite the extra load from people in lockdown, it said.

But the lockdown period has seen some very high-profile outages. When Virgin Media went offline, for instance, it left many users without internet connections for hours.

The company stressed then that the outage was not caused by "increased usage or a lack of capacity".

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