UPDATE Cable Break Hits Major Broadband ISPs and Users in London

Thousands of homes and businesses in and around central London have been left without a functional broadband and phone service, which began yesterday afternoon after third-party contractors working on a construction project accidentally cut through a number of core fibre optic cables (pictured).

The outage, which began shortly after midday on 14th June, has affected several ISPs in the area including customers of Virgin Media and Sky Broadband among others. A number of ISPs were also conducting routine network maintenance in London yesterday, which also caused a bit of unrelated disruption.

According to Sky, the main problems are being experienced in Brixton, Nine Elms, Vauxhall, South Clapham and Battersea.

Sky’s Service Status Update (9:59am today)

Repair work continues this morning. We understand from our on-site engineers that the problem has been caused by construction work which has accidentally cut through a number of fibre cables. Engineers are currently removing debris so cable restoration work can continue.

Apparently some customers of different providers have been advised to expect a restoration of their service by around 4pm today, although major cable breaks are frustrating problems to tackle and so it’s often difficult to give an accurate time-scale.

UPDATE 16th June 2016 (7am)

Some 600 metres of fibre optic cable has had to be replaced and re-routed. The work was then slowed due to a blocked cabled duct, although we understand that engineers were finally able to start splicing cables together last night and some connections are now beginning to come back online. However the work is still on-going and ISPs are continuing to warn of connectivity problems.