Virgin Media says internet access restored in North after broadband outage

By August Graham, PA Business Reporter

Virgin Media UK said it has restored broadband to customers in the North and in Britain after a widespread outage on Tuesday morning left people struggling to access the internet.

The telecoms provider said at around 11.30am that it had fixed the problems which first started at around 2am, according to data from Downdetector, a site which tracks outages.

At that point there had been a big spike in reports to the website of problems with Virgin Media, with another peak coming at around 7am.

Virgin Media said on Twitter: “We’ve restored broadband services for customers but are closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

We’ve restored broadband services for customers but are closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

— Virgin Media (@virginmedia) April 4, 2023

However, in replies to the tweet, several users said they were still having problems.

Downdetector found that 74 per cent of users were having problems with their landline internet while 24 per cent said they were suffering from a total blackout.

Virgin Media acknowledged there had been problems with its systems and said it was working to fix everything as soon as possible.

There were also similar spikes in Downdetector reports at around 2am and 7am for other telecoms providers, including BT, O2 and TalkTalk.

Virgin initially said: “We’re aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres.

“Our teams are currently working to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible and we apologise to those customers affected.”

Virgin Media Ireland said its broadband customers in the Republic were not affected by the outage.