A third of Britons hit by internet outages amid shift to remote working

More than a third of Britons have had their internet cut out over the past year, even as they came to increasingly rely on their connections.

New research from Uswitch suggested that more than 20m adults in the UK had experienced an outage in the past 12 months, whilst 4.8m Britons had not been able to get online for at least three hours due to power-cuts, broadband issues or routine maintenance on cables.

Around a quarter of people were working when their internet crashed, Uswitch said, meaning such issues could be costing the UK economy more than £1.5bn every year, when accounting for lost time at work.

Internet connections have become increasingly important over the past year, after millions switched to remote work during the pandemic. Estimates have suggested that up to 40pc of people have been able to work from home, and many companies are now looking at slashing office space to save on costs.

However, unreliable internet connections could make a permanent move difficult for many workers.

Nick Baker, a broadband expert at Uswitch, said: "With so many of us still working from home, your broadband going down for even a few hours can be a major disruption with significant consequences.

"Losing that vital link with the outside world is no minor inconvenience. So internet providers who fail to communicate effectively with their customers during an outage can make a bad situation worse if they leave people in limbo, not knowing when their service might be back online."

It follows earlier figures from ThousandEyes which showed there had been a spike in outages at the start of lockdown in March, when many were logging on from home for the first time.

This week saw further problems for BT customers after its broadband kit was damaged by the thunderstorms.

The company told users that it was "aware of problems affecting parts of the UK", and that if they had experienced a recent storm, to restart their routers. It later said it believed it had fixed the fault.

Many parts of the UK are expecting further thunderstorms over the next few days.

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