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Virgin Media puzzles over mystery bug after thousands lose internet service

Updated on: 04 April 2023

Vilius Petkauskas
Senior Journalist

Image by Shutterstock.

The tech giant has said it is “working to identify” the glitch that plagued its internet connection and website, which were both unresponsive for several hours.

Virgin Media, one of the UK’s largest internet connection providers with nearly six million users, experienced downtime as thousands of users could not use the service.

“We’re aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres,” Virgin Media said at the time of the reported glitch.

According to the outage-tracking website Downdetector, nearly 30,000 people complained of having issues with Virgin Media on the morning of April 4.

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According to user reports, the issues with its service started in the wee hours of Tuesday, with over 10,000 reports of the outage at 4am local time.

The situation appeared to stabilize after the initial furor, as Downdetector indicated the number of complaints dropped below 1,000. A company spokesperson has told Cybernews the service has been restored – but it remains unclear what caused the outage.

“We’ve restored broadband services for customers, but are closely monitoring the situation as our engineers continue to investigate. We apologise for any inconvenience caused,” the spokesperson said.

Virgin Media is a subsidiary of Virgin Media O2, a joint venture between telecom conglomerates Liberty Global and Telefónica.

Cl0p ransomware gang breached Virgin Red, Virgin Group’s rewards club, late last month. However, Virgin Media is not a part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and only shares aspects of the Virgin brand.

Coincidentally, Branson-owned rocket firm Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy the same day Virgin Media experienced a significant outage.