Virgin's internet service under spotlight with two outages in a fortnight

Customers of Virgin Media have been left frustrated for a second time in a little under a fortnight after hundreds reported failures with their internet connections.

The downtime, which mostly affected customers in the Nottingham area on Monday, was caused after a cable terminal used by Virgin went down.

The outage follows a larger problem with its network in June which affected customers around London.

During the last network problem, more than 10,000 complaints were registered on Downdector, a website that tracks network and website problems. The most recent problem was smaller and localised.

A Virgin Media spokesman said the network problems lasted around an hour for customers in Nottingham just after half past 12 on Monday.

Virgin claims the problems were not caused by high demand putting strain on the network.

The spokesman said: “We've fixed the local issue which meant customers in the Nottingham area briefly lost broadband services. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

Dan Howdle, a telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, said: “Outages can be particularly frustrating both for users and for businesses whose employees are working from home during these difficult times.

“Without some sort of backup, it will prevent many from completing their assigned tasks, curtail online staff meetings and obstruct the uploading of complete work. We advise Virgin Media customers working from home to switch to their mobile phone’s internet connection by enabling tethering – your phone’s mobile Wi-Fi hotspot.

“However, those affected should be careful not to push past their data limits as this can become costly, depending on the terms of their mobile contract.”