Sky TV Customers Still Suffering Problems After Huge Outage Last Night UPDATE2
Some customers of Sky’s UK pay TV services appear to still be suffering from connectivity problems this morning after the platform suffered a significant service outage late last night, which primarily seemed to impact users of their Sky Q boxes. But Sky has remained frustratingly silent during this outage.
The bulk of the problems appear to have started at around 9:30pm last night and continued until just after midnight. Customers reported that their TV service suddenly switched off, despite the box itself still showing a green light. Some subscribers attempted to rectify the issue by rebooting their set-top-boxes, which worked for a short time (not for everybody) before the issue reoccurred.
During this period customers reported seeing various error messages, some of which referenced problems with an “authentication server“, while others displayed messages about there being no signal/source for the channels or stating that “there has been a problem finding your Sky Q box on the network“.
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However, anybody looking for some kind of statement or acknowledgement of the issue from Sky’s online Help Team via social media (or otherwise), during one of its biggest national TV outages, will have been left disappointed. Sky didn’t post any public service statements during the night, and we’re still awaiting a comment from them this morning.
Nevertheless, Sky’s many suffering TV customers were still able to share their complaints via a huge mega thread on Sky’s Community Forum, which unfortunately reveals that quite a few people are still suffering problems this morning.
Sample Sky TV Complaint by Steve486 @ 8:18AM
“Our main Sky Q box keeps shutting down and then won’t switch back on. If I unplug it and restart it, it works for a while and then shuts itself down again. Of course this means none of our Sky Mini boxes in other rooms can connect either.”
Sample Sky TV Complaint by apchelt @ 8:12 AM
“Having exactly the same issue here too. Happened whilst watching a recording and whilst in (Paramount) app.
Reboot via mains switch fixed it temporarily then went again 30 minutes later.
Symptoms are black screen with green power light but unresponsive box.”
Sample Sky TV Complaint by Adams93 @ 8:13 AM
“Anyone else having problems with their SkyQ box not working? Has anyone been able to talk to anyone at sky and understand how to fix?”
A quick glance at the related Downdetector page for Sky confirms that there are still some issues for Sky to work out this morning. The suspicion is that Sky may have attempted to push out a platform configuration or firmware change to their boxes last night, which might have gone a bit wrong, although there’s not currently enough solid information to be confident of this. The issues come only shortly after Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers suffered their own set of similar issues (here).
UPDATE 8:41am
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Sky’s support agents seemed to have woken up and are now responding to some social media posts with the following message: “We are aware of some technical issues overnight that led to Sky Q boxes to go into standby mode. Our technical support teams investigated and resolved this. If your sky Q box is still stuck in standby please switch off your Sky Q box at the power socket for 30 seconds and back on again which will restore service. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.”
However, as per the complaints above, switching the Sky Q box off and on again doesn’t appear to be working for everybody. Some other customers have advised turning both the Standby Mode and Smart Standby Mode off in the settings (Settings > Setup > Preferences), which only needs to be done on the main Sky Q box. But if you can’t get into the menu then disconnect the box from mains power for a minute and reconnect to try again.
UPDATE 9:52am
A Sky spokesperson just told ISPreview: “We’re sorry some customers had trouble accessing Sky Q last night. The issue was quickly resolved, and service has been restored.”
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Now, what we would have really liked to hear is a pledge to correct the problem with their information black hole, which seems to occur when major outages at Sky happen overnight. It only takes one person to log in and post a short message, which would have given people at least some peace of mind. If a big company like Sky can’t do that, then something needs to be corrected.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Sky’s only comment is this canned reply to X comments
“we are aware of some technical issues overnight that led to Sky Q boxes to go into standby mode. Our technical support teams investigated and resolved this. If your sky Q box is still stuck in standby please switch off your Sky Q box at the power socket for 30 seconds and back on again which will restore service. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused”
I missed the last 15 minutes of the Charlton Wycombe playoff match due to this problem, hence missing the only goal of the game I think an apology is the least Sky can issue to their many customers who pay a significant monthly subscription. Compensation?
Not surprising, most likely didn’t test it properly or released the wrong version, Apple did that once and released the incorrect firmware update for iPhones, I believe it bricked some and had to replace them. Companies need to be a lot more careful when you are impacting millions using your service.
But communication is key, and Sky seems to have totally failed at that here choosing to remain silent instead. If I hadn’t already left them years ago this attitude would certainly push me away.
Sky are still stuck in the mentality that using a status page or posting out of office hours is a major inconvenience to them.
It would take one member of staff 2mins last night to login to their community to post the obligatory “we’re sorry and working hard etc” and update the status message.
But instead customers end up getting frustrated and resetting or even wiping their Q box in desperation to solve an issue Sky refused to acknowledge.
I think the government needs to step in and make these ISP’s post an update on any network problem.
People rely on these services more than ever yet ISP’s are still acting like it’s the 90’s and they will post something when they feel like it.
Because the government forcing people to do stuff always made things better…
There’s plenty of ISP competition. Pick a less useless one!
What a nonsense statement!
What if VM are your ONLY fast provider because ADSL or FTTC is just too slow because of distance from cabinet and cross talk and 4G oversubscribed???
Also, if you have just one ALTNET available, and you want symmetric, there may be no other ISPS offering symmetric or 2gbps or more speed.
This was a TV outage. Nothing to do with the ISP side of the business.
anonymous: should’ve really stopped after the first paragraph.
‘Also, if you have just one ALTNET available, and you want symmetric, there may be no other ISPS offering symmetric or 2gbps or more speed.’
Regulation isn’t there to ensure people have multiple symmetrical or multigig providers or to prevent them from having to slum it on 1.6G down, 115M up. Government shouldn’t be there to pander to people’s sense of entitlement.
Why should the government get involved, its not major infrastrcuture outage, Its a TV outage .. nobody died .. go outside, take a walk, go next door and have a cuppu, speak to another human instad of staring at a television or doom scrolling twitter for updates ..
In other words .. get a life !
My comment was directed towards “There’s plenty of ISP competition. Pick a less useless one” – demonstrating that others might be a more severe cut down version and not usable for the customer needs (and ignoring the fact the news article is about TV transmission not IP anyway).
I agree with the original poster, after recent Netomnia outages (and other ISPs), OfCom should mandate a system status page that is updated whenever an outage. Its to the end public benefit, and stops ISPs trying to cover up, or cover up scale of outage.
We know what no government / ofcom supervision does by comparing BT/Openreach to Virgin Media.
VM service scored consistently lower on everything, especially around customer service.
Let’s switch DVB-T and DVB-S off and go full IP.
I agree. Lets leave just DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 on instead 🙂
We didn’t want to keep pulling the plug to restart the box every 30 minutes after the first four so we switched it off entirely after realising they’d broke something important and had to re-wire the dvd player back in, so as you can tell, a dire situation. In their defence we have never had a problem in 20+ years and kinda glad it isn’t our box which we thought it was to start off. Started ebaying Q boxes before checking for outage
Q boxes are loaned, if there’s a fault, sky replace them, those boxes on Ebay arnt the sellers to sell, and will probably be blacklisted if you pair to your account.
We were watching the news and then it went totally black and then up came a blue screen with a statement at the top telling us it could not connect to the main box
Reboot the box in the living room and it all came back on, to go off twice more. Our Sky Q mini box and main boxes are 5 years old so I was about to ring for replacements in the morning until I went on twitter to see hundreds of similar isues
As a sky Q customer paying nearly £ 100 per month , interruptions to service is occurring more frequently and needs attention. We pay more and more and get less efficient service
Well, stop paying them then! Don’t renew contract and tell them why.
Only when people cancel do management listen. Else its shut up, and listen to our emphatic words of “small number of people affected” yada yada…..
Pretty funny a guy telling someone they should just cancel their TV service while claiming people shouldn’t have to put up with moving ISPs if the alternative isn’t symmetrical or doesn’t offer 2 Gbps and they want one of those things.
Yep, as usual, you make no sense. One was about the actual service offering not being available and the other was about paying a price for an unreliable service. Alternatives to Sky; Virgin media TV, BT TV, cut down Now TV.
Alternatives to symmetrical are asymmetrical and to 2G less than 2G. Might not be as good and might not be what you want but it’s an alternative.
Care to try again?
You pay at least £1200 a year just to watch Sky TV!!! Think about that.
Same as many above. Signal lost, rebooted everything, ok for 15-20 mins then signal lost again. Gave up after it happened about 4 times, and after seeing online reports (not from Sky). Nothing on Sky app or website. Think it’s disgusting that Sky service has not responded fully and quicker with a decent explanation and apology.
I have to say, I’m really disappointed with Sky. I’m already paying a significant amount, which has just gone up even more, yet my Q box shut down three times yesterday and once again this morning. To make matters worse, it seems you’ve turned off your customer phone line. Are we going to receive any compensation for this lack of service and professionalism? I hope this issue is resolved quickly, especially with the F1 and Eurovision coming up. Sky, this isn’t impressive!
unlikely to get any compensation. if they do will prob be a free film or a days worth of bill refunded ie £100pm bill would be around £3 . luckily my mother is still on sky+ hd and that was fine, was a software issue affecting q boxes, which was fixed hours ago ( from articles i have read )
Got a call from my parents saying the Sky Q had gone down, they’d even (not being tech savvy) done the reboot and followed the instructions and still couldn’t get it to work.
Luckily I’d left the aerial connected and they were content with Freeview for a few hours, and I’m glad that still exists, I really hope Freely is another white elephant.
Got a text this morning, that it all seems to be back up this morning.
I feel sorry for Stream and Glass users, those boxes and TV’s seem to go down every week, welcome to the early days of technology and streaming – still some life in broadcast TV yet, even when Q has a glitch.
Before the keyboard darlings and warriors jump on me because I took a pop at Glass/Stream I know Q takes most of it’s delivery from broadcast satellite.
@Me Some folks go out Friday and Saturday night and over those nights spend £100 plus on booze. Think about that!!
Typical money grabbing $ky.
It is now 20:47 on Friday 16/5/25 and I still get the screen flashing with a note on the screen since about 22:00 on Thursday 15/5/25. I managed to get a picture of what it said on screen and it is telling me “It looks like you do not have internet connection right now (I’ve never had internet connection). If you’re already set up we’ll keep trying to connect. If you have changed your internet password or router (I haven’t) you need to reconnect to your network.
Go to settings (I can’t – the screen won’t stop flashing on and off).
Still no output from SkyQ box. Sky operative confirmed it is connected to the outage and an engineer will have to attend. Earliest appointment available Thurs 22 May. Operative said nothing earlier and they have been receiving calls all day, which is why all the appointments have been booked. For Sky to say its fixed is simply not true
Email today offering a Sky Store download as compensation.. time to pick a 10 year old movie for free!
Corporates fulfilling Enshittification ? Should be laws against it and decisive enforcement.