BT Blames Flooding For Telephone Exchange Fire

BT has confirmed to eWEEK Europe UK that flooding was to blame for a fire in a telephone exchange, that knocked out Internet access and telephone lines for tens of thousands of customers in the West End and central London.

“There was flooding in one of our telephone exchanges in the early part of this morning (Tuesday) that led to a fire, which knocked out our systems,” explained a BT spokesperson. “Tens of thousands of customers in central London and the West End have been affected.”

“We have restored power to the building and hope to have the service restored by the end of the day,” the spokesperson told eWEEK Europe.

Fire and water

The affected telephone exchange is located in Gerrard Street (Chinatown), and it was flooded when water reportedly from a main drain caused a small fire within the power supply equipment within the exchange. A picture of the fire damage can be seen here.

“A number of customers in Central London have been experiencing a loss of service,” said BT in an official statement. “BT’s engineers are on site and working to repair the damage.”

“Power has now been restored to the building and services are being restored,” the carrier added. “BT expects that all services will be restored by the close of business today, Tuesday 21 December and apologises to all customers impacted.”

BT said that it will issue further updates as the situation changes, but customers can contact the BT status line (0800 169 0199) for recorded updates. Alternatively they can check online here.

This is not the first time a BT telephone exchange has been knocked offline by flooding.

Back in March this year, a BT exchange in North Paddington was flooded, which also caused a fire. That incident left tens of thousands of customers in parts of North and West London experiencing major problems with their telephone and broadband services for several days.

Christmas Shopping

Today’s incident could not have come at a worse time for many businesses and retailers in the run up to Christmas, with the severe winter weather and snow leaving many customers unable to travel.

The fire has left many shops in London’s Regent Street and Oxford Street unable to process credit and debit card payments. This comes as a new survey of 200 online merchants from merchant acquirer and payment processor Chase Paymentech Europe Limited, discovered that Card Not Present (CNP) downtime is spoiling the holiday season for some.

This is despite the fact that Christmas 2010 is expected to be a record year, with consumers set to spend an estimated £11.5 billion online (a 28.8 percent increase on 2009).

Fifty-nine percent of merchants surveyed admitted to suffering downtime to CNP payment systems during a typical month – amounting to 72.8 hours of downtime a year (or three whole days), during which customers were unable to complete online transactions.

“The balance is definitely moving away from the high street with many consumers choosing to avoid icy roads in favour of conducting shopping online. While there is a huge opportunity for merchants to grow revenues over the Christmas period, many are unprepared for the impact of the rush on backend systems. By the time a shopper reaches the payment stage of the buying process, they have already invested substantial time on a merchant’s website. If the payment process fails not only will it impact the merchant’s bottom line but the consumer may choose to shop elsewhere – never to return,” said Shane Fitzpatrick, President and MD, at Chase Paymentech.

Meanwhile research from shopping search engine Twenga.co.uk, showed how British shoppers are making the most of online shopping to fight back against the cold weather.

Twenga.co.uk has apparently seen a 306 percent rise in searches for snow boots, 244 percent rise in searches for wellington boots and a 249 percent increase in searches for fur hats. It also recorded a 827 percent rise in searches for snow tyre chains and a 965 percent increase in searches for shovels.