The Register are reporting that a fire at a BT building in North Paddington is
causing widespread problems on the BT network. 437 local exchanges and 37,5000
Datastream circuits are reported to be affected.
“Following a fire at a BT exchange in the Paddington area, customers in
parts of North and West London may be experiencing a loss of broadband and/or
telephone service. Customers in other parts of the country may also be
affected.”BT Statement
Vodafone are also reporting that its network has been affected by the
incident.
Update 19:10 31/10/2010
A further statement has been received from BT this afternoon with regards
the Fire at Burne House in Paddington.
“Following major flooding at a BT exchange in the Paddington area, tens of
thousands of customers in parts of North and West London may be experiencing a
loss of broadband and/or telephone service. Customers in other parts of the
country may also be affected. We are currently working on restoring services to
customers, however as this is a complex incident we cannot accurately predict
when all services will be restored. We will issue further updates as the
situation changes.Any customers needing to make calls to the emergency services who have a
problem using their phones are advised to do so by using their mobile phone, or
alternatively by using a friend or neighbour’s working phone.”Updated BT Statement
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i work for a ISP and its been crazy since this morning a lot of angry customers
My brother just said “worst day at work ever” lol – he works with ISPs/ADSL support.
Wasn’t me guv as I left Paddington just after midday.
Looks like it could take some time to resolve.
@ nadger
This will take more than “sometime” to fix this was own goal by BT/Fire department
you basically got wet adsl equipment and water and adsl do not mix well
The fire/flooding was in the basement, it shouldnt take long to get power restored to site. There is an openreach engineer on site at the moment with a generator waiting to hook it up. There’s also a backup generator on the way as well.
Would not be so sure it will all be restored so quickly. Water and high voltage electricity dont make good bedfellows. Power surges may have damaged equipment and with soo much powered down it may take sometime replacing anything/everything that may be damageed
How long is it likely to take to be fixed?
The power and copper cabling come into the basement, this is where the fire and flooding happend. The last update i has was that the fire brigade were unable to pump out the water quick enough and Openreach has acquired industrial pumps to pump it out of the basement. This is near completion.
The actual MSANs, DSLAMS and other equipment are on other floors.
Openreach have advised that some services will be restored by the initial generator with further services to be restored by the second generator which is en-route.
The full BT notification was posted here:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/t/3825797-re-large-bt-service-outage.html
I dont think there is a realistic restoration time at present as there is no power to the building , the main supply and generator were damaged by the flooding which has yet to be pumped out. Then they will need to dry out and/or replace power equipment. Generator maybe used but may not be enough in the short term to supply everything
How much impact would there have been if the connections had been, say, fibre, rather than copper? Does water trouble fibre in the same way it troubles copper wiring?
Just askin, like.
Fibre terminates on routers etc. which are obviously afected by water.
Many of the outside links will be fibre.
“Fibre terminates on routers etc. which are obviously afected by water.”
Main reason for asking is that coverage on at least one other sites (which I can’t find right now but is presumably where TalkTalkBoy above read it too) claims that the flood is in the basement where the copper terminations are, whilst active kit is said to be upstairs and not flooded. Plausible? Sensible?
Like I say, just askin’.
The main issue is a power to the building
My exchange here in North Yorkshire are not affected.
Exactly Carpetburn, because BT’s policy of deliberately setting fire to, and then having flooded during the extinguishing, their buildings is causing many problems across the country. As other providers will surely not have such a policy then it can only be good.
<\sarcasm>
I thought I better add the tags as some may not understand.
Well I’m no where near Paddington, North Hampshire to be exact, and I’m impacted by issue. As a small business I need connectivity!!!!
My provider (Nildram/Tiscalli/TalkTalk/Opal or whoever they are today) can’t even route elsewhere to bypass this. Is the comms infrastructure in this country so poor that all connections pass through a single point (of failure!) Is seems to me that it’s a very weak setup if that’s so! Grrrr
There isn’t a single point of failure for ALL connections. OK here.
Our ADSL just went down in SW London. Fortunately we have two ADSL lines into the office on different exchanges both with Plus.net. Swap the routers over et voila!. Up and working again…
Service restored 01/04/2010 01:00
no it isn’t!!! Telephony – incoming calls still not coming through (Peacehaven E.Sussex)
With modern networking, should it not be possible to route around any problems except in the end-user premises or the ‘last mile’ connection? ie, in this case only those lines actually terminated at this exchange.
weremog1,
Thats a problem with your own service providers equipment, power is restored though 😉
@gmwebway:Not really. Modern networks are built to be cheap to run not to be reliable.
Eclipse: “We have been advised that the earliest resolution for this incident is currently Sunday 4th April.”
Well I just tried to book a driving test and the payment facility isn’t available because of this I was advised on the phone to try at the end of next week, so looks like a long job
the postcodes listed on theregister included me in leicester, however I didnt have an outage so I wonder if that was a mistake it been listed or maybe some of leicester was affected.
I live next door to the exchange for me it went down at around 10 – 11am my BT landline 02 mobile and BE Broadband all off, chaos outside all night and mine was all restored by the time i got up this morning, seems i was lucky businesses in the area was still out at lunchtime including all the ATM cash machines and banks were all closed still.
The LLCL0 LLCM0 LLEA0
LLEM0 LLES0 LLLC0 LLLN0 LLLS0
LLLV0 LLLW0 LLMR0 LLMY0 LLND0
LLNE0 LLNI0 LLSD0 LLSL0 LLSM0
LLSS0 LLST0 LLSW0 LLTH0 LLWE0
LLWN0 LLWR0 LLWS0 LLWW0 To Fo
in the post refer to trunks of cable and not postcodes 😉
sorry I meant dialing codes, my dialing code was listed.
LOL probably one of there own customers set fire to the exchange out of sheer frustration ..maybe he thought BT would fibre it up ha ha ..hummm i shouldnt put idea’s into peoples heads ..CARPET stay away from that petrol can
I would imagine the size of the standby generator and the noise when running it would preclude above ground siting. Its quite usual for high voltage equipment to be sited in basement areas as this is where the 3 phase supply would enter the building.
Probably diesel.
Who says the generator is in the basement?
It is normal for standby diesel generators in exchanges and places like broadcastiing studios to be sited in basements. Not all exchanges have standby power. In emergencies mobile gens are used. Not sure how an end to BT’s monopoly (?) would make any difference. Any company with equipment provided to be part of the network could be susceptable in the same way.
Generators are rarely above ground level, often at ground level.