Virgin Media internet down for thousands

Thousands of Virgin Media O2 users in the UK have reported that they are unable to access the internet.

Downdetector, which tracks websites, showed more than 26,000 people had reported their home broadband was not functioning.

The problem comes as Virgin contacts customers to advise them of price increases - averaging at a 13.8% higher bill.

The firm said it is "working to identify and fix" the outage.

Virgin has around 5.8m home broadband users across the UK, according to its latest figures.

Like other internet suppliers, Virgin is raising its prices from April 2023 for existing customers.

It is also changing the terms of its contracts to bring it in line with most other suppliers, which increase the cost of broadband contracts by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) or Retail Prices Index (RPI) measures of inflation plus nearly 4% - meaning some services are increasing monthly bills by 17.3%.

The problem does not appear to be affecting Virgin's television service, or its mobile internet coverage.

The outage began overnight on 4 April according to Downdetector, with 14,000 people reporting problems at 2am BST (1am GMT).

By 8am, just under 26,000 people told the website they could not access their broadband.

The actual number of affected users is unclear, because users must have an additional way to access the internet - such as a mobile device with 4G - in order to report the problem.

Virgin's website was also inaccessible at 8am, meaning customers could not use its status checker, which advises users on the connectivity status of their broadband, television and phoneline.

However, the website now appears to be loading.