Partner Article

BT power outages causes business mayhem

Thousands of UK businesses were left without internet yesterday, due to a nationwide BT power-outage.

This came as a blow for many companies up and down the country, who are already in a tenuous position due to the economic climate.

When businesses attempted to contact the BT faults team, many were met with an automated telephone message that the faults department was unavailable or calls could not be answered due to circumstances out of BT’s control

Rob Samuel IT director at IntaPeople recruitment consultancy was one of those affected. He commented: “Like many others, the outage has meant that we were unable to send and receive e-mails and access important online services for around three hours.

“This may not sound like that long, but the jobs that are left undone over this period can add up to thousands of lost pounds.”

During the course of the afternoon BT confirmed that the cause of the problem was a power failure at a Birmingham exchange.

Samuel added: “With the economy still in the balance, there are a lot of companies that do not have enough in the bank to absorb unexpected issues like these”

A BT spokesperson said that engineers were working on the service, and advsed any customers still suffering problems to turn their Hub or modem off and on again.

She commented: “We can confirm that, as a result of a power failure at one of our major exchanges, some customers may have experienced loss of broadband service for a brief period this afternoon. All services have now been restored, with the majority of BT’s consumer broadband customers’ service being restored within just one hour.

“BT apologises for any inconvenience caused.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .