Sky Broadband DOWN: Hundreds unable to connect to internet as outage ‘lasts 12 hours’

Broadband not working in your home this morning? You’re not alone. Hundreds of disgruntled Sky Broadband customers have flooded social media to complain about issues with their internet connection for the second time in 24-hours. The latest issues preventing customers from getting online, sending or receiving WhatsApp messages, and streaming music and video this morning appear to be linked to a huge outage that impacted hundreds of customers across the South and South-East of England from 7pm last night (September 1).

Sky confirmed that a problem with its service last night left some unable to get online or make/receive phone calls from their landline. It had promised to “work overnight to fix the problem”, however, it’s unclear whether the connectivity issues reported this morning are a continuation of the outage last night… or a new issue.

Independent website DownDetector, which tracks reports from customers across social media to monitor the performance of web services, reported a huge spike in complaints from Sky Broadband customers last night. At its peak, some 2,329 customers were voicing concerns about their broadband connection not working every minute.

Reports on social media are beginning to pick up this morning too, with more than 687 people complaining about poor broadband connections at the time of writing. These reports are trending upwards too. That makes sense, as more and more people wake up and attempt to login to their work email, check social media, stream their favourite Netflix boxset in bed – the problems are likely to be spotted by more customers across the UK.

Using geolocation data from the social media posts, DownDetector is able to place the complaints on a map. According to this data, the areas most likely to be impacted are London, Cardiff, Oxford and Brighton. Out of those affected, the vast majority (98 percent) are reporting issues with their Sky internet connection.

According to Down Detector stats, the areas that are reporting issues with Sky broadband include London, Fulham and Manchester.

Sky provided an update about the problems that left hundreds in the South and South-East unable to use their broadband connection on its Server Status page. This webpage is designed to flag any known issues to customers – as well as an estimated time for the fix. In the last update, published at 6.30pm September 1, Sky shared: “Broadband and Talk problems in South East England and Wales – You might not be able to get online or make/receive phone calls due to a problem in your local area. Our technical teams will continue to work overnight to fix the problem and we will provide an update on progress in the morning. We’re sorry for the continued inconvenience.”

There are no other known issues with Sky services, including its satellite TV and mobile signal. 

Across social media, floods of frustrated customers are complaining about the problems. One user shared on Twitter: “Good morning! Any idea when the internet will actually work?”

“#skybroadband down since 6pm last night. Looks like I’ll be working from.a cafe today – a real good look when on important client calls…” another added.

One customer shared: “I have woken up to find my Sky internet is still down. That’s all last night and now this morning. What a pain! Hurry up and fix it!”

Sky uses the @SkyHelpTeam account on Twitter to respond to complaints and issues from customers struggling with broadband issues. However, in the last update shared by the team last night, they wrote: “Goodnight everyone & sweet dreams. We’ll be back tomorrow at 08:30am to help out.”

This isn’t the first time that Sky broadband customers have had issues with the service hitting trouble a number of times last month.