Virgin Media down – latest: Broadband down again after provider apologises for earlier outage – The Independent

The biggest broadband firms are providing a service that is “mediocre at best” as consumers brace themselves for inflation-busting price increases, reports Josie Clarke.

TalkTalk has been rated the worst major broadband provider, losing out to smaller firms such as Zen, in an annual satisfaction survey of almost 4,000 customers by Which?

The watchdog found that most of the biggest firms offer little more than unreliable connections, “appalling” customer service and “barely there” technical support despite announcing monthly bill increases of at least 14% from next month.

Virgin Media came 10th in the ranking with 54 per cent, scoring poorly for customer service and technical support. Virgin’s monthly costs will go up by an average of 13.8 per cent in April.

Households already struggling with the cost of living crisis this winter could now see their broadband and mobile phone bills rise by as much as 14 per cent from April.

BT, EE, Plusnet and Vodafone broadband deals all reportedly permit price rises in line with the CPI rate of inflation plus 3.9 per cent, while TalkTalk’s stated increase is CPI plus 3.7 per cent.

Sky Broadband and Virgin Media contracts allow similar increases but do not specify a pricing formula in the same way as their rivals.

My colleague Joe Sommerlad has more details:

Virgin Media has told The Independent that its services are now “stable”.

A spokesperson said: “Services are currently stable (they have been for a few hours now) and customers can use their broadband as normal. We’re continuing to investigate the issue.”

Here is Virgin Media’s most recent statement, in which it said: “Unfortunately we have seen a repeat of an earlier issue which is causing intermittent broadband connectivity problems for some Virgin Media customers.”

Here is the latest map from Downdetector showing the hotspots for Virgin Media outages over the past 24 hours.

Edinburgh, London, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds all appear to have been particularly affected.

There appear to still be hundreds of people affected by outages, according to the Downdetector website.

In this report on the Virgin Media blackouts earlier today, my colleague Anthony Cuthbertson reported:

Some users reported that they were able to reconnect to the internet by rebooting their router or modem, while others claimed it was possible to circumvent the issue by using a virtual private network (VPN).

The widespread Virgin Media outages today have impacted a range of local services and businesses across the country.

Among those affected were a number of councils, South East Water, and Leicester City Football Club.

Today’s outages come as Virgin Media customers face their bills rising by an average of 13.8 per cent.

They are by no means alone. According to the MoneySavingExpert website, BT, EE, Plusnet, Shell, TalkTalk and Three have all announced April price hikes of up to 14.4 per cent for mobile and broadband customers.

Virgin also plans to introduce annual inflation-linked price rises from next April, which will be nearly 4 per cent above RPI inflation.

The company has some 5.8 million home broadband users in the UK, according to its latest figures.

The problem appears to be tapering off, with the number of outages reported falling significantly again, according to the Downdetector website.

Virgin Orbit has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after failing to secure the funding needed to recover from a January rocket failure.

It comes just days after the California-based satellite launch company said it was laying off 85 per cent of its 750 staff and ceasing operations for the foreseeable future.

My colleague Thomas Kingsley has the full report: