Liberty-owned UK broadband pusher Virgin Media has fallen on its face this morning, with users across the country reporting complete broadband failure for a number of hours, among them some of the reporters on this news desk.

Earlier today, even its status page was unavailable, although prior to this readers who alerted The Reg were complaining that "their service status reports no issues like it always does." Its website staggered to its feet at around 08:30 UTC.

Several customers across the country reported being able to get online using a VPN, with some speculating that VM's main DNS server was down, although for others the router simply wouldn't connect to the network, and repeatedly flashed "various lights as if it was going round in circles trying to connect to the mothership," as one put it.

[1]

According to [2]DownDetector and Twitter, reports started flooding in just past 01:00 local time, with a tally of 27,000-plus, itself only a proportion of Virgin Media users.

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A notspot networker at wavemobile raged on Twitter that they'd had a "sleepless night thanks to @virginmedia and ZERO information or apology. Things go wrong, the least you can do is tell us via a reliable service page. Would have saved me a trip to the office at 3am."

Its Twitter [5]mouthpiece said the company was "aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres. Our teams are currently working to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible and we apologise to those customers affected."

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This will be the last thing British-based techies trying to get a jump on the weekend or organize upgrades over the Easter long weekend will have needed.

One angry Reg reader noted: "Mind, it took seven hours for them to acknowledge there was a problem!"

Worryingly for its network resilience status, contact centers were also out of reach, with another reader noting: "150 phone contact goes to number not available. Virgin website seems to have dropped back to a 'simple' format. Some websites work, others don't."

[7]UK watchdog still not ruled on Openreach wholesale fiber discounts

[8]Not satisfied with Virgin Media and O2 merger, Liberty Global takes 5% Vodafone stake

[9]British govt tech supplier Capita crippled by 'IT issue'

[10]Outage rates fall, but major ones will cost more. Oh and don't bank on SLAs

Last month Virgin Media/O2 [11]reported its first full year results as a merged business after being bought by telco giant Liberty Global and Spain's Telefónica. It reported flat total revenue of £10.38 billion ($12.97 billion) but managed to wring more profits from that, with an adjusted post-transaction EBITDA that increased 6.3 percent year-on-year to reach £3.9 billion. It declared a shareholder dividend of £1.6 billion.

Nexfibre – a joint venture between Liberty Global, Telefónica and Infravia – completed in December. VM, which is an anchor tenant and build supplier of the network, says its Virgin Media O2 footprint will be expanded to 80 percent of the UK by [12]2026 , at which point it hopes to present a "scaled wholesale fibre opportunity" that will challenge the nation's current broadband plumber, Openreach.

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We have asked VM for comment, including about why there was no resiliency in terms of call centers and its own website, a situation that suggests failures of what should have been built-in network redundancies. ®

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[1] 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=2ZCv1Re-VyW-hP7UfIwJ-FwAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[2] https://downdetector.co.uk/status/virgin-media/

[3] 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=44ZCv1Re-VyW-hP7UfIwJ-FwAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[4] 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=33ZCv1Re-VyW-hP7UfIwJ-FwAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[5] https://twitter.com/virginmedia/status/1643151634006941697?cxt=HHwWgoCxkZLt0s0tAAAA

[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=44ZCv1Re-VyW-hP7UfIwJ-FwAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/17/ofcom_delays_decision_on_openreach/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/14/liberty_global_vodafone_stake/

[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/capita_confirms_it_outage/

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/27/report_outage_rates/

[11] https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/investors

[12] https://news.virginmediao2.co.uk/new-4-5bn-investment-to-extend-virgin-media-o2s-fibre-footprint-to-80-of-the-uk/

[13] 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=33ZCv1Re-VyW-hP7UfIwJ-FwAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/