UPDATE Customers of UK ISP TalkTalk Suffer Dead Phone Lines

A large number of customers with a TalkTalk home telephone line have spent most of the day with a malfunctioning service, which seemingly presents no dial tone and often does not allow either incoming or outgoing calls.

Unfortunately TalkTalk hasn’t had a useful Service Status page since it was taken off-line during last year’s cyber-attack incident, although there’s no shortage of complaints about the problem on their Community Forum. Most of the gripes began during the early hours of this morning (around 7-8am), although some of the more sporadic complaints also date back to yesterday.

Status Update
No dial tone – Problems using your phone, January 14th 11:10am

We’re experiencing problems with no dial tones on some landlines. If you’re affected by this, you may still be able to make or receive calls. We’re working hard to fix this issue and will provide a further update here by 2:00pm today.

We really sorry for any inconvenience caused, due to this fault we’re currently experiencing high call volumes..

Contrary to the above statement many customers are not able to make outgoing calls, although “some” can receive them, but experiences do vary. The only good news is that the lines aren’t totally dead because most of those affected are still able to get online via their DSL broadband connection.

The problem appears to have been affecting customers across the United Kingdom, although we understand that Openreach engineers have already been able to resolve it in some areas.

UPDATE 2:32pm

The ISP reports that this fault has now “been resolved for the majority of our customers and we’re looking to fix the remaining issues by 4pm today“. Apparently customers can register to receive text message updates on this issue by calling 0203 441 5550 (from a mobile) or 0870 444 1820 if calling from a landline (assuming it works.. duh). A spokesperson said, “We apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused“.