Posted: 05th Apr, 2009 By: MarkJ
Customers of Namesco , a UK broadband ISP and hosting provider , appear to have been hit by a major service outage after a fault with their wholesale suppliers network left many subscribers without a connection. Broadband users with usernames ending in: dynamic.ndodsl.com, static.ndodsl.com, staticip.ndodsl.com, dsl-login2.com and easykey.net are known to be affected.
The problem concerns a fibre optic connection between two buildings and began occurring at around 2:30pm yesterday. It is believed to have affected several UK ISPs, although we do not know precisely how widespread the issue is. Saturday's last service status update (
forum post) read as follows:
UPDATE
17:19:54 Our supplier is still conducting their investigative and repair work. There is a possibility of cable damage and therefore due to the nature of the repair, work is likely to continue into the evening. We will post additional information when it becomes available.
Sadly Namesco pulled its customer support forum due to inactivity last month, thus users may be finding it more difficult than usual to find out what has happened.
UPDATE - 6th April 2009 @ 8:11am :BT Openreach has confirmed that the issue relates to a serious cable damage incident by a third party contractor and is affecting customers of several UK broadband ISPs in East London. The full BT update reads as follows:
A third party contractor has caused significant damage to one of our deep underground tunnels resulting in the loss of service to a large number of end users in parts of East London
Due to the nature of the damage, which happened 32 meters below street level, and the restricted access to the site, it is not possible at this stage to provide an exact timeframe as to when service will be restored to all customers.
Because of the severity of the damage, the tunnel is completely blocked and to restore the cables they will need to be brought up to the surface either side of the tunnel and then routed over land through existing and new duct. The new duct is being built today as we gain permission to close roads and do the necessary work.
As a consequence of this large scale operation it may be some days before we see all services fully restored.
Openreach engineers have managed to restore the service to a number of affected end users using alternative methods of connection, although it will clearly be awhile before everybody is back online. The issue is extremely serious and BT has offered its apology to all impacted customers.
UPDATE - 7th April 2009 @ 4:37pm :BT has just sent us the latest situation update and noted that customers can now get automated updates on progress by dialling 0800 169 0199 :
Service has been restored to a significant number of customers, including emergency services, all 75,000 telephony lines impacted, as well as a number of business and other communications provider circuits using alternative methods of connection. Restoring some services is a complex engineering task, but BT engineering teams are working around the clock to restore service to all remaining customers without service as soon as possible.
Given the complexity of the incident, it is not yet possible to accurately predict when all services will be restored.
BT will issue further updates as the situation changes.