Virgin Media internet down: Mass outage hits Devon as customers complain they are unable to get online

Group of strangers bond after receiving a reply-all email (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Virgin Media users in Devon say their internet has gone offline.

Users in Plymouth, Exeter and other cities in the county said they were unable to access the web as normal.

Instead of loading websites, affected users instead saw their browser hang up and then load up an error page with attempted fixed for their connections.

The company confirmed the issue on Twitter and said that a fix was estimated at 12.15pm on 5 May. The problems began over the morning of the same day, users said.

“I can confirm there is currently an outage in your area at the moment and our engineers are working hard to get it resolved as soon as possible for you guys,” Virgin Media wrote to one affected user. “Sorry for the inconvenience this may cause this morning!”

Some customers had asked the company to confirm that it was suffering an outage to assure their employers that they were not attempting to skip work, as many people continue to do so from home.

The last year has seen people rely on their internet connections more than ever, as data from Virgin Media has repeatedly shown.

In March of this year, it announced that it had seen its biggest day of internet usage ever. The additional load was the result not only of lockdowns but also big game downloads, including Call of Duty.

The company said that, as well as record usage, those patterns had changed. Weekday afternoons have become its busiest time for upstream traffic, for instance, which had increased even when compared to the first lockdown.