TalkTalk Paralysed By Network Failure
UK’s third largest internet service provider TalkTalk went silent with a network failure this morning
TalkTalk has suffered a major outage this morning, paralysing both its Internet and voice services across the network.
“We’re experiencing a technical issue this morning that means you can’t access our website, or visit MyAccount, at the moment. We are sorry about this and are working hard to get this resolved as soon as we can,” read an error message on TalkTalk’s site earlier this morning.
According to the company, the technical problem also disrupted voice services for some customers, making them unable to make or receive calls “for a short time”.
It appears that the company’s services are now up and running, but during the problem, users who visited the TalkTalk Network Status page for updates on the network’s condition were greeted with an apology message: “unfortunately this service is currently unavailable”.
TalkTalk tops user complaints list
The service disruption seems to support Ofcom’s recent findings that TalkTalk received most of the complaints from customers of landline and broadband services in the UK.
According to the communication regulator, TalkTalk was the most complained about fixed-line ISP. Between October 2010 and February 2011, its landline service received 1.78 complaints for every 1,000 customers who expressed their dissatisfaction with Ofcom, while its broadband offering fetched 1.27 complaints.
Currently, TalkTalk is the third largest ISP in the UK after BT and Virgin Media. In the final quarter of 2010, however, the company’s customer base shrunk from 4.3 million to 4.2 million.
The company has attributed its problems to the absorption of the customer base of Tiscali , a process which involved billing problems, and led to many complaints to Ofcom.
