UPD Sky Broadband Outage Hits the South Midlands and South Downs

Customers of Sky Broadband and Talk services in the South Midlands and South Downs areas of England currently appear to be suffering Internet and phone connectivity problems due to a major outage.

The largest of the two outages is affecting the South Midlands, specifically customers around Toothill, Wooton Bassett, Swindon, Malmesbury, Chippenham, Corsham, Cirencester, South Cerney, Faringdon and Stratton St Margaret. Apparently the phone services don’t work and likewise broadband connectivity appears to have gone the same way.

The South Midlands fault began earlier this morning and Sky has yet to clarify the cause, although engineers are now said to be on-site. “You might not be able to get online or make/receive phone calls due to a problem in your local area. We’re working on fixing the problem and we’ll provide an update on this page once we’ve discovered what is causing the fault. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused,” said a Sky spokesperson.

Meanwhile the smaller and separate fault in the South Downs area, which is affecting Bracklesham Bay, Birdham, Bosham, Chichester, Sidlesham and Eastergate, began at around midnight and was caused by a serious break in one of Sky’s core fibre optic cables (usually an accident caused by third-party contractors). Engineers were confirmed as being on-site earlier this morning, but there have been no further updates since (related breaks usually take quite a few hours to fix).

UPDATE 22nd April 2016

The South Midlands outage appears to have been resolved, at least it is by virtue of the fault completely disappearing from Sky’s Service Status page (sadly they don’t appear to retain a history). However the problems in the South Downs are on-going.