BT is working round the clock to bring back up "the vast majority" of landline phone and broadband services following an outage caused by "major flooding" late last week at a telephone exchange in Paddington, West London.
The initial outage at the Paddington exchange had a domino effect on other U.K. telephone exchanges. In total, the flooding affected 437 exchanges throughout the U.K. Not only did the network outage leave residential customers without phone or broadband service, but it forced local bars and shops to only accept cash since they could not access the payment systems that leverage BT broadband connections.
BT estimated that "tens of thousands" of its customers were affected by the outage and that it probably would not have service restored until this Tuesday.
A Light Reading article points out that while network outages are not unusual, it comes at a time when BT is positioning itself as a broadband leader against strong competitors such as cable rival Virgin Media.
For more:
- BBC News has this article
- Light Reading Europe also gives its perspective
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