Sky internet down: Broadband outage hits customers across UK

(Reuters)

Sky internet appears to have been hit by network problems, causing issues for people trying visit websites and use other online services.

Hundreds of reports were registered by Down Detector, while users also complained of problems on social media.

"Can someone stick 50p in the meter or reconnect the wires?" one customer wrote on Twitter. "Sky internet is down again!"

Similar outage reports spread online last month, after network issues in Cornwall left people unable to connect to the internet.

The latest issues appear to be affecting customers throughout the UK, according to Down Detector's outage map.

Internet outages have become increasingly common during the coronavirus pandemic, as containment measures force people to spend more time at home using bandwidth-heavy services like online streaming platforms.

Monitoring firm ThousandEyes said in a recent report that outages had increased by 42 per cent between mid-February and April.

“While outages don’t follow a predictable trend there has been a notable increase in traffic due across the Internet and to core business, media and social platforms in recent weeks, due to changes in working, and living, patterns," said Ian waters, ThousandEyes' director of product marketing.

"This doesn’t necessarily cause more outages of itself, and there are multiple reasons an application or service can experience an outage."

Customers are able to monitor any issues with their service through Sky's status page.

Sky's official 'Help Team' customer support account on Twitter said: "The quickest way to fix Sky Broadband issues is through our Help section.

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