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BT broadband out for some customers despite line rental price hike

The broadband provider admits that some customers may have trouble accessing Web pages.

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Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Expertise Films, TV, Movies, Television, Technology
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Richard Trenholm
2 min read

The flatmates in BT's adverts will have trouble getting into comic misadventures and hi-larious scrapes with their broadband connection interrupted. BT

BT broadband customers are having problems getting online, which is just adding insult to injury considering the company hiked line rental prices today.

"We're aware of an intermittent issue that's affecting some broadband customers," a BT spokesperson said in a statement. "Our engineers are working to resolve this as quickly as possible."

BT's status tracker page reported the issue at just after 3 p.m. Monday. It's described as an ongoing problem, so there's no word on when it might be fixed.

The problem isn't great timing for BT, coming on the same day as line rental goes up by £1 a month. Broadband providers Sky, BT and TalkTalk -- and Virgin Media in February -- are raising prices because people aren't using their fixed phone line as much as they used to. Many people have a fixed line as a pipe for their Internet connection, and with it Skype, WhatsApp and other methods of communication that cut into revenue from landlines.

Customers are predictably bemused by the loss of access to the Internet.

"So it isn't me just losing my mind", says blogger Felice Fawn. "What on earth is going on?"

"Not just me being messed around where we've paid for working internet to be accessible all the time? Good to hear", says Tom of Puron.

"Snap!", says DozyDory. "TV off internet off! Load of rubbish", although she rather charitably then adds "xx".

The outage is cutting into your daily activities. "Makes working from home quite difficult...." says the industrious Chris English.

"Yeah I was going to tweet you about this, kind of inconvenient seeing as I wanted to stream on Twitch", says gentleman of leisure Lee Worez Gaming.

Some customers note this is business as usual. "Thats a daily event for me!!" says Si Harries. ‏

Luckily, Obiwan Shinobi is in a generous mood, tweeting "thanks guys! Appreciate the update, can't be an easy issue to find and then fix!"

You can check your own line and keep an eye on problems on BT's status page.

Update, Tuesday 2 December: Added statement from BT.