BBC News: Virgin Media outage hits UK TV viewers (UPDATED)

Story from BBC News Online:

Virgin Media customers were left without access to TV services, after the firm suffered a nationwide outage. 

The issue which began around 1030 GMT prompted thousands of viewers to report problems. 

The firm told customers its engineers were working to fix the problem, which hit cities across the country, including London, Birmingham and Manchester. 

In a recent update the company said it had restored some channels (BBC One, BBC Two, STV HD, Channel 4. ITV and STV +1 are broadcasting in Media Boy HQ at 18:45 GMT).

The firm said the issue had been caused by "a major power outage". 

The website Downdetector which tracks outages received more than 18,000 reports of problems at one point. 

Many users tweeted their annoyance at the loss of service, and the way in which Virgin Media communicated: "Can you update please? No TV. Your status page down. No info on phone lines", wrote one customer. 

The company said it had identified the fault and its engineers were working flat-out to fix the issue. 

At 13:45 the company wrote: "We have now restored several channels with customers able to watch BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, ITV+1 and Channel 4. TV360 customers are also able to access apps on their box", the firm wrote. 

"We're working to restore all channels as quickly as possible and continue to work towards having this resolved this afternoon." 

But the partial return did not please everyone: "Channels 1 to 4 are working, but the problem is it's not the year 1985 and we pay for hundreds of channels", one customer tweeted. 

And some users complained that the channels had appeared then disappeared. 

The cause was revealed in a further update from the company at 15:30, "We are currently attempting to restore more channels. As we do this, it may mean customers temporarily lose access to previously restored channels." 

"We recognise this is frustrating for customers and apologise again for the inconvenience caused".

By 21:00 GMT almost every Channels was back on air but still a few problems.... 

Crime & Inv HD (Channel 209) was showing an black screen with no audio.

TCM HD (Channel 416) and TJC HD (Channel 757) was both broadcasting an "we're sorry this channel is temporarily unavailable..." slate. All was fixed by December 6th. 

Source: epsilon. 

THIS POST WAS LAUNCH AN 4PM THEN UPDATED ON DECEMBER 6TH AT 11AM WITH ADDED INFORMATION.

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