Virgin Media glitch left thousands of UK customers without broadband

Tens of thousands of UK Virgin Media customers were unable to access the internet or make calls this morning after its broadband and telephone services temporarily went down.

More than 28,000 customers reported connectivity problems on the Downdetector website, while the company said in a tweet that it was “aware of an issue . . . affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres”.

The company later said it had restored broadband services but was “closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate”.

A person with knowledge of the details said that the company had been experiencing a “DNS” or Domain Name System problem, with users unable to connect to websites using domain names such as FT.com.

They added that an investigation was ongoing and “foul play” had not been ruled out.

The DNS is the global directory that matches internet addresses users enter with the domains they are trying to access.

In December 2021, a DNS problem at Meta prevented people from accessing WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram for several hours.

Virgin Media, jointly owned by billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Global and Spain’s Telefónica, is one of the UK’s largest providers of broadband and telephone services.