Orange UK suffers 'major' broadband outage

Broadband users with Orange in the UK have suffered what the firm described as a “major” national outage Tuesday.

Blaming a “third party network failure”, Orange has confirmed the blackout is “affecting large parts of country” in a recorded message on its tech support line. The Orange press office has issued a statement but refused to comment on the matter. Asked if it would allow an interview with a spokesman at a later point, the firm said: “No, we are not doing any interviews on this.”

The company said in its statement: “We are working with our engineers and suppliers to rectify the problem as quickly as possible. Service was restored to more than 20 per cent of affected customers overnight and will resume for more customers exchange by exchange throughout the day. We are working to restore normal service to all customers as quickly as possible. We apologise to those customers affected.”

Orange claims to have around 2 million broadband customers but not all are on its unbundled network. It did not put a figure on the amount of customers affected.

The glitch will be a major embarrassment to the firm as its new broadband offering is supposed to take on both Carphone Warehouse and Sky who launched similar “free broadband” services in the summer.

Customers who sign up for any Orange mobile contract over £30 per month, for a period of 18 months, receive up to 8Mbps fixed broadband and a wifi-enabled Livebox at no extra charge – either for installation or on a monthly basis.

Bernard Ghillebaert, executive vice president of Orange UK said at the time of launch that the company planned to unbundle 500 exchanges by the end of the year, giving it 40 per cent coverage of the UK population. This compliments the 80 per cent UK population coverage the operator already enjoys from mobile services and the existing 200,000 Liveboxes it already has installed in the UK.