By: MarkJ - 30 October, 2010 (8:13 AM) - Score: 34062 - Fixed Line Broadband

BT has been struck by yet another major broadband outage on its UK network, which is affecting areas in the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The unspecified fault began at around 9pm last night and continues to be an issue for some people this morning.

The outage, which comes less than two days after a similar disruption affected Birmingham and the surrounding UK Midlands area (here), is said to only be affecting older 20CN BT lines (8Mbps services). However we know people on 21CN connections that have also experienced a loss of service, which may or may not be related.


Much like Thursday's fault, most of the problems are occurring on lines going through Edinburgh's Broadband Remote Access Servers (BRAS). Some ISPs are reporting that their lines are back to normal, although most others are not.

The issues in the Fair isles, Northern Highlands and Islands area were resolved at around 8am this morning, although problems continue to be affecting lines both in and around Edinburgh.

UPDATE 4:56pm

The problems continue to affect customers in the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is despite a brief period earlier today where BT claimed to have resolved the situation on its 20CN broadband network.

Currently BT cannot provide us with an estimated time for the repairs to be completed. Some ISPs are reporting that the problem has been resolved, although this is not true of all connections.

UPDATE 31st October 2010

All ISPs are now reporting that BT's 20CN based broadband services have been fully restored to normal. Some 20,000 people were affected by the situation, although the real-world figure (where connections are often shared) is probably significantly higher.

The situation appears to have been completely fixed late last night and anybody still having problems should power your broadband equipment off for 10 minutes before trying to reconnect. If that fails then contact your ISP to report a fault.

UPDATE 3rd November 2010

Here we go again..

Second UK BT-Broadband Outage Strikes North England and Northern Ireland