Tech
A "serious outage" at one of Virgin Media's headends resulted in all television services being unavailable in ex-Telewest areas this afternoon.
It is understood that a power surge and subsequent failure of the backup power systems at the headend in Knowsley - one of three that power Virgin Media's television and broadband internet services - resulted in all linear and on demand TV services going down in ex-Telewest areas. Some channels were also rendered unavailable in ex-NTL regions. Broadband services were affected in some areas.
Reports on the Digital Spy forums suggested that Virgin's call centres were suffering from issues stemming from high call numbers and system loss.
Discussing the problems on the Virgin Media newsgroups, senior product manager Alex Brown said: "Our teams are working their socks off to fix these at the moment and to restore service as quickly as possible and the good news is that these services are now starting to come back online."
Most linear TV services have now been restored but on demand and interactive services remain unavailable.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "At 11.30am Wednesday morning a national grid fault caused loss of mains and damage to backup power at our Knowsley site. Power was restored shortly before 1pm. Customers receiving services from Knowsley may have seen a temporary loss of television and broadband services, however telephone services were unaffected. Television services are back online now with broadband and interactive services restoring gradually. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."
It is understood that a power surge and subsequent failure of the backup power systems at the headend in Knowsley - one of three that power Virgin Media's television and broadband internet services - resulted in all linear and on demand TV services going down in ex-Telewest areas. Some channels were also rendered unavailable in ex-NTL regions. Broadband services were affected in some areas.
Reports on the Digital Spy forums suggested that Virgin's call centres were suffering from issues stemming from high call numbers and system loss.
Discussing the problems on the Virgin Media newsgroups, senior product manager Alex Brown said: "Our teams are working their socks off to fix these at the moment and to restore service as quickly as possible and the good news is that these services are now starting to come back online."
Most linear TV services have now been restored but on demand and interactive services remain unavailable.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "At 11.30am Wednesday morning a national grid fault caused loss of mains and damage to backup power at our Knowsley site. Power was restored shortly before 1pm. Customers receiving services from Knowsley may have seen a temporary loss of television and broadband services, however telephone services were unaffected. Television services are back online now with broadband and interactive services restoring gradually. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused."
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