Online firms aiming to capitalise on the biggest web shopping day in history – so-called Mega Monday – were scuppered by a nationwide broadband outage after BT admitted its network went down for hours.
The issue, which affected broadband users across the country, sparked a social media backlash – presumably by people using their 3G mobile phones – as consumers expressed their dismay at being left without a broadband connection.
Broadband provider PlusNet, which is owned by BT, reported that the problem was affecting 23 dialling code areas, from Birmingham to Brighton, and Warwick to Worcester.
On social networking site Twitter, the telecoms giant said: “Sorry if you were unable to use the internet this morning, we’ve got a network problem affecting some customers nationwide, more updates soon”.
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Communications services provider Timico updated its DSL customers by stating that “we are currently affected by a major service outage which is causing some of our customers to be presented with issues when trying to access the internet”.
Caroline Hooton, based in London, tweeted: “BT now estimates fixing the broadband problem by 15:00. I won’t hold my breath.”
BT has since released a statement which said: “We can confirm that a number of broadband customers will have experienced technical difficulties, following a software upgrade on our network. We have been working hard to fix the issue and have already restored service to the majority of those affected.”
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