British Telecom ( BT ) has today moved to reassure officials concerned by another panic ridden report earlier this week, which warned that the UK's broadband network might be unable to cope with the extra demands placed upon it by a potential Swine Flu pandemic.

The Whitehall meeting of emergency services apparently feared that the country's network could freeze as more people became infected and started working from home. Unless of course they didn't work and all logged in to view the BBC's iPlayer service instead; that would make Tiscali and BT's day for sure *cough*.


Certainly the network would take a performance hit, though we suspect that it wouldn't be far off the usual peak time usage seen in the evening hours; when everybody comes home from work to catch up with people and events online.

As ever with fear mongering stories like this it’s best to take them with a big pinch of salt, not a year goes by without several predictions of “The Internet is DOOMED!.. again” or something similar popping up. Funnily enough though it just keeps on going, who would have thought it; shouldn’t we all be extinct by now anyway? More @ BBC News Online .