Virgin Media suffers another major outage

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UPDATED: A Virgin Media spokesperson told TechRadar Pro: “We’ve fixed the local issue which meant customers in the Nottingham area briefly lost broadband services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Customers are reporting outages in their Virgin Media broadband connections in some parts of the UK.

The outage began around 14:00 BST on Monday, according to tracking site DownDetector, which showed continuing high numbers of complaints in London, with users in Nottingham, Kingston-upon Hull and Glasgow also registering a high number of issues. 

Thousands of complaints were logged on the site, with many users losing connection as they work from home during the recent pandemic.

Customers flocking to social media to complain about a lack of connectivity, with some mobile internet and TV services also apparently affected.

Virgin Media down

The issue is the fourth to hit Virgin Media in a matter of weeks, with the company suffering a similar event late in June 2020 and another a few weeks earlier.

The company has responded to several users on Twitter, but no explanation has yet been given for the problems with an investigation currently ongoing.

The outage comes as UK broadband and mobile providers have enacted a series of measures to support spikes in demand during the pandemic.

There had been fears that these networks would struggle under the weight of additional data traffic but any predicted meltdown has failed to materialise. Most networks have been built to withstand peak demands, while major streaming services have reduced transmission quality at the request of the EU. 

Recent figures from Ofcom found lockdown has seen the rapid adoption of video calling and other over-the-top message and voice platforms.

Mike Moore
Deputy Editor, TechRadar Pro

Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.