March 31, 2010

by Darren Allan

A disaster hit a BT exchange in the Paddington area of London this morning, widely disrupting broadband services in the south.

A fire broke out at the exchange, apparently, along with a flood which really did the damage.

There’s no word on whether a plague of locusts descended afterwards, but at any rate, the chaos caused broadband and landlines across London and the home counties to be knocked out of action.

According to a BBC report, tens of thousands of customers are said to be affected, with the majority of those in the north and west of London.

ComputerWeekly quoted BT as saying: “We are currently assessing the impact of the damage but will only know the full extent of the impact once the site has been declared safe and our engineers are able to enter the building.” (Without the aid of scuba diving gear).

No word yet on when everything is expected to be back to normal, but it sounds like this one could take a bit of time to sort out.

Story link: Fire and flood hits BT broadband