Major BT outage

A major flood at a BT exchange in Paddington, London affected broadband and telephone services across the UK over the Easter period.........

Tens of thousands of businesses were affected according to BT, with the majority in north and west London. Customers as far afield as Potters Bar, Hertfordshire and Nottingham were reporting problems.  BT published a list of 437 exchanges across the UK that were affected. 

However it wasn’t just fixed phone calls that were affected, with a high number of businesses diverting their calls to mobiles, all major networks experienced conjestion issues. 

As you know phone lines are used for so much more than conversations. When cash points tried to get approval for someone withdrawing money, they couldn’t, and the ATMs were shut down. The same happened with PDQ machines for people trying to use a credit card in shops.

By noon on the first day, SagePay, one of the UK’s largest online payment processing systems, were saying: “Please be advised Lloyds Cardnet and Halifax Bank of Scotland customers are currently unable to  process transaction via the SagePay gateway." So, websites across the UK stopped being able to take money.

Given the 31st March may well have been pay day for many, how many companies couldn’t contact the bank electronically to make that payment?

Although we all enjoy the benefits of an interconnected world, sometimes there are risks.  A bit too much water and a business's trading for the last day of their financial year is interrupted.  What is the loss of business this one fault caused?

Disaster Recovery - SynergyOne can help

If you were one of the 48,000 businesses that suffered severe disruption to their telecommunications due to the BT exchange outage in Paddington prior to Easter, SynergyOne can help to ensure that you will never suffer the same level of outage again.  

Using products such as IP SIP trunking, enhanced care services and inbound call plan solutions, we can help you protect your business.