London left buffering as Hyperoptic backup link refuses to boot
- Reference: 1763035193
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/13/hyperoptic_has_a_terrible_no/
- Source link:
The service fell over on November 11, and despite users [1]reporting that Hyperoptic's status page claimed there were no issues, there were indeed.
Hyperoptic customers left in dark as power outage takes down systems [2]READ MORE
A spokesperson for the company told The Register that "a small percentage of our customer base in North London experienced an unexpected temporary loss of service," but things were up and running again "within less than 24 hours."
According to the HyperopticCS account on Reddit, the issue was a little more widespread. One post [3]noted : "The outage is affecting a wider network of exchanges throughout London, postcodes W2-W9 are all impacted to a degree."
Another stated: "The Zayo link is down and we're currently working with Openreach to get it fixed. Their engineers just arrived. All teams are now on site working diligently to get the problem sorted."
[4]
Zayo [5]claims to be one of the largest global internet backbone companies. Losing the link meant a very bad day for Hyperoptic and its customers.
[6]
[7]
But wait, surely there was a backup? There was, but it appears it did not work as planned. A spokesperson told El Reg : "While our network is designed with built-in redundancy, we are also reviewing a secondary link that did not activate as expected, which should have limited customer impact."
[8]Azure stumbles in Western Europe, Microsoft blames 'thermal event'
[9]DNS downing clouds is boring: IBM Cloud is experiencing a quantum computer outage
[10]Azure's bad night fuels fresh calls for cloud diversification in Europe
[11]Amazon Web Services' US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted
And the primary link? "The outage was caused by damage to a fibre cable at our local aggregation point. Hyperoptic's engineering teams, along with our partners, worked tirelessly throughout the night to carry out repairs and restore connectivity as quickly as possible."
According to a [12]Reddit post , service was restored by 0300 on November 12.
Despite the nearly day-long outage, Hyperoptic said customers won't receive compensation, as "this incident does not qualify for automatic compensation under the terms of Ofcom's voluntary scheme (of which Hyperoptic is a member)."
[13]
The company apologized for the disruption and described such incidents as "very rare," though questions remain about the backup system and why it did not activate when needed. ®
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[1] https://x.com/LucieGutfreund/status/1988226066264084756
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/29/hyperoptic_outage_scotland/
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperoptic/comments/1oubgsa/comment/nobuhj5/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aRYOqP-r-wH-ONwjRnUD9AAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.zayo.com/about/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRYOqP-r-wH-ONwjRnUD9AAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aRYOqP-r-wH-ONwjRnUD9AAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/05/azure_thermal_event_west_europe/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/30/ibm_cloud_experiencing_quantum_computer/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/30/europe_azure_outage_reaction/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/aws_us_east_1_more_problems/
[12] https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperoptic/comments/1oubgsa/comment/noff715/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aRYOqP-r-wH-ONwjRnUD9AAAAAo&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Ofcom's voluntary scheme
I had a load of trouble with them. They agreed a date for install, which they missed, by several weeks. They pulled this exact "not eligible for compensation" shit.
The day that the broadband was due to go live I received a 5G router in the post. Completely unrequested and unneeded as I have an unlimited 5g data contract on my phone. It was instantly packaged back up and returned to them.
Months later they invoiced me "£170 - 5G router" insisting they'd never received it. Of course, by this time I'd (initially) lost/misplaced the proof of postage.
Queue a ton of legal emails back and forth (to state the obvious - you can't send someone an item unrequested and then bill them for it, this was a common scam in ye olde days, so there's specific legislation barring the practice). To cut a long story short, I eventually found the postage receipt to them and they relented (but not without significant and lengthy communications back and forth prior to that).
They effectively accused me of being a thief. Threatened to take me to court. Wasted my time over weeks emailing back and forth AND widely missed the original install date - absolutely zero offered in compensation. Not even a "here's 3 months free to say sorry". Just blanked.
Then, when I wrote a negative TrustPilot review .. they deliberately doxxed my TrustPilot account by using my full name in their reply (which is a unique name), which landed them with a GDRP complaint.
This level of customer service is particularly grating because the broadband itself is actually fairly reliable (this story notwithstanding).
Re: Ofcom's voluntary scheme
Sorry abou that. I've been with them for years and never had to complain about the service, but this attitude is inexcusable.
Feeling smug...
just had 1Gb symmetrical fibre installed in my village house in Spain.
19.99€ a month.
Re: Feeling smug...
Are you sure?
Maybe it's a G-PON. Shared with world+dog.
Re: Feeling smug...
I've just withdrawn a post after failing to fact check it!
The OP could well be correct. XGS-PON is significantly more widespread in Spain and a lot of operators seems to offer symmetrical speeds up to 1Gbps - though higher speeds may be asymmetrical.
G-PON seems to be the default case for the mass market in the UK. As far as I'm aware, the majority of the Openreach FTTP network is G-PON with the gradual introduction of XGS-PON. Again, as far as I'm aware, Hyperoptic is similar. Corrections welcome.
My Portuguese connection is also G-PON and marketed as "1Gbps", but it's nominally 1Gbps down and 500Mbps up. The actual speeds are actually pretty close - around 920Mbps down and 520Mbps up.
Which isn't bad for an even smugger 15 euros a month.
Maybe the backup fibre was in the same trench.
Maybe it was a couple of spare pairs in the same cable run ...
Maybe the backup fibre was in the same trench.
I'm guessing an IGP, so BGP probably won't get the blame this time. Or the usual problem when clients have totally resilient networks that automatically fail over in a few ms, with a seamless tranistion.. Which leads to that awkward question- "When did you last test it?" Which all too often lead to an answer of "Just after we installed & commissioned it".
Why the hell aren't they using BOTH links at once? That's the perfect test of your infrastructure, just push different clients/IP blocks down different paths, with failover when needed if one link goes down?
Yes, constantly using your "backup" links lets you know when they aren't working, rather than discovering they aren't working the second you fail over on to them.
Ofcom's voluntary scheme
Funny how you can't volunteer to pay when it suits you.