Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Sky broadband outage forces swathes of UK customers offline

UK broadband provider Sky has been hit by outages across the UK, sending users offline in a host of areas around the country. 

User reports of Sky outages have skyrocketed over the past few hours. There had been a couple of hundred reports over the evening of July 27, but the following morning has seen that number rise into the thousands.

We're told by Sky that “We are investigating an issue affecting some Sky Broadband and Talk customers in Norfolk and Suffolk. We're sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing.”

A Sky spokesperson tells us that "the outage is only across Norfolk and Suffolk – not national", though Downdetector shows a slightly more complicated story.

The site cites London, Norwich, Nottingham, Derby, Birmingham and Bristol as the areas with the most user reports over the past 24 hours. Within London the biggest problem areas appear to be Beckton, Wandsworth, and Islington. Users commenting on the site claim the issue has reached Inverness in Scotland too – with heatmaps on Downdetector showing a large number of reports in Belfast – so the problem certainly appears nationwide.

The Sky Help Team Twitter account posted about the problem at 8:35am this morning, albeit only in Norfolk, writing that "Customers may not be able to get online or make/receive calls." It made a similar post on July 27 about customers in Cumbria being briefly unable to "get online and make/receive calls. We're sorry for any inconvenience caused."

The issue appears to be almost entirely regarding internet outages, with only a fraction of users reporting loss of TV services.

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My internet is down – what next?

If you're one of the customers affected by the outages, you can log into your Sky account here to assess the damage to users in your area.

Those of you with a good mobile data plan may be able to get by using your phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, or accessing emails and key work platforms over mobile. 

The issues appear to be concentrated more in urban areas – that tend to have better 4G and 5G coverage – meaning rural users shouldn't be as affected, but it may be that reports are weighted towards more congested cities.

Friendly neighbors may also let you hop onto their internet connection for a short while, at least until Sky fixes the issue. Otherwise, all you can do is probably wait.

Via Metro

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