Sky Broadband is back online after SIX HOUR outage that saw thousands of customers in the South of England unable to access the internet
Thousands of Sky broadband customers were unable to get online this morning, as a major outage appears disrupted service across parts of the country.
Problems started at around 06:00 GMT, according to Downdetector, which monitors online outages, with customers in the South of England appearing to be the worst affected.
The vast majority of those complaining about problems on Twitter and other online forums said they were unable to access the internet via their Sky routers.
Sky customers in the south of England appearing to be worst affected, according to Downdetector, which monitors online outages
‘Our broadband service is back up and running, and we’re sorry for the disruption caused to some of our customers this morning,’ a Sky spokesperson said in statement to Mail Online.
The problem reportedly stemmed from a broken network card. Sky engineers were able to fix the card and get services back up and running at around midday.
‘We are aware of an issue affecting some of our customers broadband across parts of the UK, we’re sorry for this,’ Sky said in a statement on it official Twitter support account earlier today.
‘We have the right people working hard to fix this. Keep up to date on the My Sky app or our service status page: https://servicestatus.sky.com/#/uk/issues.’
Several customers pointed out that they were unable to check the My Sky app, as it was one of the services affected by the outage.
Sky acknowledged the outage in a statement on its official Twitter support account, and directed customers to its service status page
The My Sky app, which customers can use to manage their accounts, is also inaccessible, according to some reports
The company’s status page was showing a red icon indicating ‘issues’ with Sky Broadband and Talk services.
Some users suggested using a virtual private network (VPN), which allows web users to create a secure connection to another network over the internet, as a ‘temporary fix’.
‘If you have a VPN browsing works fine through that. I’m on SKY and accessing a VPN and everything is working fine,’ one user wrote on the Downdetector forum.
Sky’s service status page shows that there are ‘issues’ with broadband and talk services, and the next update will be provided at 1pm
Sky says it has ‘the right people working hard to fix this’. Problems reportedly started at around 06:00 GMT
The news comes after the Labour Party last week announced a plan to offer free full fibre broadband to every UK home by 2030 if it wins the election.
The plan would involve bringing the Openreach element of BT – which is responsible for installing and maintaining phone and internet infrastructure across the country – back into public ownership.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the roll-out would cost £20 billion, and maintenance of the network would be paid for by a tax on multinational tech companies, such as Apple and Google.
Several Twitter users joked that the Sky broadband outage has provided Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with ammunition to push ahead with his plan.
Several Twitter users joked that the outage had provided Jeremy Corbyn with ammunition to push ahead with his free broadband proposal