Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK Suffers Large London Outage UPDATE3
Customers of broadband ISP Virgin Media are reporting that the provider’s internet connectivity (and possibly also TV) has suffered another significant outage this morning, which appears to be affecting some different parts of the United Kingdom but is primarily focused upon the London area.
The problem appears to have begun at around 9:20am when the first complaints cropped up and, as usual, the issue has also taken out their Service Status page. Seriously Virgin Media, when a broadband outage occurs at other ISPs we very rarely ever see it also taking out their Service Status page (note to virgin: you’d have a lot less people scrambling for answers if you fixed this once and for all – please sort it out).
At the time of writing we’re still awaiting an update from the operator, although some of those who have managed to reach customer support claim to have been told that a power outage may be to blame and the expected fix time is after midday or by 1pm ish (oddly others have been told 2pm).
UPDATE 10:57am
We’ve had a quick comment from VM.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said:
“We’re aware that some customers in parts of London are experiencing an issue with their broadband. We are working as quickly as possible to restore services and apologise to those affected.”
UPDATE 1:19pm
Interestingly Ofcom has also taken the unusual step of commenting on Virgin Media’s outage, which is not something we usually see.
A Spokesperson for Ofcom said:
“We are aware Virgin Media is experiencing problems with its network in the London area. We are in contact with the company to establish the cause of the problem and ensure customers can access services as soon as possible.”
UPDATE 3:52pm
A spokesperson for Virgin Media has just informed that the problems are starting to be resolved: “We’re pleased to say the London broadband issue is now fixed. TV issues are still occurring which we’re working to resolve. We’re sorry once again and we realise this was a frustrating situation for those affected.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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No issues here in the Midlands thankfully.
Issues with a few connections in Birmingham but not sure if ita related to London issue.
It is down in the W12 London area too
This is not some isolated incident. Virgin media has been terrible since we went into lockdown with multiple outages of 1-2 hours each time per day over periods of weeks, especially in the Battersea area. Their response is genuinely atrocious. No offer of price reductions or refunds because they only do that if the service is down for 24 hours. Things have been better in the past 1-2 weeks, but this is the 3rd significant outage in the past 10 days. Most of the time, their status page either shows no problem or doesn’t work at all (as today).
Not working in Willesden
If I can make any recommendation it’s to try and keep the router cool. I tink that the problems lie in the router hardware and the upper temperature limits.
Speaks highly of a company shipping routers than can’t cope with a bit of hot weather.
The massive cooling set ups in the hubs and data centres where the routers usually live aren’t there for entertainment. The kit generates a lot of heat.
Fans cycle air, they don’t cool it. If the AC fails in a DC the several RU routers will follow. They generate somewhat more heat than the one your broadband connects through and are specified for environmentally controlled areas.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cable/cbr/installation/guide/b_cbr_overview.html#concept_2115AE22A5CA4DDDB6521CD30C7F349F
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/cable/cbr/troubleshooting/guide/b_thermal_monitor_troubleshoot_doc.html
Rumor going around that this is tied to ongoing power outages, possibly in either Paddington or Dulwich areas.
Like Mark points out in the piece, it’s laughable that a service status system is hosted on the primary system upon which it reports.
It suggests that there is no redundancy for that function. VM have much form for poorly managing communication about outages and problems to its customers though. It’ll likely be the usual puffery about only affecting a very small number of customers e.g. tens of thousands out of millions.
“We apologise for any inconvenience” but will do absolutely sweet Fanny Adams about it or to mitigate the likelihood of it happening again.
They do have an outage page thogh it’s not well publicised:
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/outage
Last updated at 11:50 at the time of posting
*although*
14:47 now. Still not updated. Great at keeping their customers checking on their phone data in the loop.
Greenwich south london area is seriously Down.
Disgusting poor service fron Virgin Media.Lack off customer support or updates,hardly you can reach them at all.
Well that was Plusnet for 4 years back in the day – but you still stayed with them didn’t you Max…
For some of us in the SW Birmingham area last week. We had an outage on virgin media broadband lasting 3 days from Sat AM to Mon PM. A weekend with no internet, coupled with working from home on Monday, didn’t go down well .. who needs a pandemic.
Could this explain what happened in Brixton?
No internet makes people something something…
Lol.
and let us all bask in Internet’s warm, glowing warming glow
“Stay Connected”
Ha!
I have been having trouble with all three services in Leeds (ie) Broadband,Telephone and TV. This as been going on for at least two weeks now first the telephone was either breaking up or no dialing tone, TV breaking up and my 100mb broadband band only out putting 38mb on average.. But finding it very hard to get any contact for help.
Just a regular day with Virgin Media.
No explanation.
No refunds.
No quality.
And now the usual VM shills on here will tell me im wrong.
Internet is still down in NE31. Status page still broken too.
Internet is still down in se14, despite saying fixed!!
So what was the root cause, does anyone have any clue?
Reported it was caused by signal interference between its broadband and TV services at one site, rather than hot weather or over-capacity.
6 months of my contract left.
3 outages in 2 months. Guess i’ll be leaving. Not that VM will give two hoots about it. Tired of them breaking everything.
And yes.. other ISPs are more reliable, we have DSL for a backup and it failed once in 2 years. VM has failed multiple times this year.