Virgin Media is down — live updates on the outage

OUTAGE update: Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London still affected

Living in the North East (and East Midlands) does have its benefits for me. Turns out complaints from places like Nottingham and Newcastle have subsided as Virgin Media service has resumed.

The places we're seeing complaints continue are the cities in red — Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London. Complaints have leveled out at 543 at the moment, so the worst of it is over.

Virgin Media is fully back (for me at least)

Just asking around to get some final confirmation, but for me at least in the heart of England, Virgin Media is fully back.

I turned off my VPN to test and everything is loading back fine.

Service status site is (finally) working

As the outage is looking like it's almost resolved, the Service status checker page is working on Virgin Media's site — giving users a better look at when things should be resolved.

For me, I got an estimated fix time of 2:02pm GMT. Visit the site, enter your postcode and last name for full visibility. And you can register for compensation directly off this page too.

The service continues to go back to normal

As of writing, reports of issues on Downdetector have dropped to under 1,000 (currently 830), so Virgin Media services are finally returning to normal. While the estimate was around 1 p.m., there's still no official time for the fix. However, it appears the outage is finally (and thankfully) easing up!

Here's the most affected areas

There are still Virgin Media issues being reported, and it appears reports have now levelled out to around 1,100 as of writing. According to Downdetector, The most affected areas include London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, with other areas seeing problems, too.

More fixes should be coming in, seeing as Virgin estimated the fix to arrive by 1 p.m. ET. It's working for many on the Tom's Guide team, but others are clearly experiencing problems.

Virgin Media responds

We reached out to Virgin Media, and they are working on a fix as a priority.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We’re aware that some customers are experiencing intermittent issues with their services. We apologise for any inconvenience and are working to fix this as a priority.”

Many on the Tom's Guide team have now got their internet connection back, and we're seeing even fewer reports on Downdetector. Still, there are over 1,000 with issues, so there are still some problems to be fixed.

Services appear to be back up and running in several areas

Several customers are reporting Virgin Media services are working again, including in North England and other areas. The number of issues continues to plummet, so it's looking like the service is getting back into shape.

Issues kicked off at around 10 a.m., so it's verging on three hours since many had internet access. If the downward trend continues (Downdetector reports are down to just under 1,200), it shouldn't be long until the issue is solved for all.

The steep decline is good news!

We're seeing fewer reports by the minute, with Downdetector showing just under 2,000. It appears more users are getting back online, but it doesn't appear to be completely fixed just yet.

Broadband access is expected to retun at around 1 p.m., which isn't too far away now. Here's hoping it won't be down much longer!

More services affected

Virgin Media isn't the only service seeing an outage, as Downdetector shows that BT, Xbox, Microsoft 365 and more are experiencing issues. However, these problems could all stem from Virgin Media being down, as customers could be reporting that Xbox is down even though it's Virgin affecting it.

Currently, there are fewer issues being reported, which is a good sign Virgin is back up and running for more users.

Is this downward trend a red herring?

That graph keeps coming down, but yet we're still seeing more and more people report outages. And I'm still seeing them myself as a Virgin Media customer — even the service status page doesn't work!

I've also reached out to Virgin Media for additional comment, so will keep you posted on this.

POTENTIAL: Broadband access could be restored by 1pm

Virgin Media are being very quiet on this issue (something we saw during the early stages of the Three UK outage too, as companies don't want to draw the ire of an Ofcom investigation).

But Virgin Media Ireland's X account just responded to people saying that the "fault in your" area has an "estimated repair time" of 1pm.

Of course, take it with a pinch of salt. But historically, there has been some consistency on proposed live times and nationwide changes to the network.

Wait... BT is down too?!

It's not a good day to try and get on the internet here in the UK! British Telecom (BT) is also seeing broadband outages, as this spike of over 400 complaints is showing on Downdetector.

A free way to workaround it

I know in my first post that I recommended picking up one of the best VPNs, but these usually come with a price tag.

But if you just want to get back on the internet fast (and free)? Opera One R2 and Opera Air both come with free VPNs built-in. The site seems to be working on Virgin Media for me, so head over there, download it and get that VPN turned on in the settings. Users in the Future PLC team are reporting success doing this.

Could it be fixed soon?

We're starting to see the curve of outages drop over the past few minutes. This could be connected with the outage possibly being over... We'll keep a close eye on it.

Service checker page is down

OK, forget what I said. The service status checker is down in my area! You may be getting the same thing.

Virgin Media's service checker is a little unreliable

In a lot of its replies on X, Virgin Media is pointing people towards its Service Checker page. Only issue is that it's very unreliable at the moment. My main advice is to keep trying to load and it'll work eventually. I'll show you what I get (when it loads).

Statement from Virgin Media

As reported by The Independent, a Virgin Media spokesperson has released a statement:

“We’re aware that some customers are experiencing intermittent issues with their services,” they said. “We apologise for any inconvenience and are working to fix this as a priority.”

Time will tell how long this will take!

The current situation — Virgin Media and connect mobile phone networks are down?

Currently on Downdetector, the number of complaints stands at nearly 9,000. Looking at the heat map of the UK, it seems like the most heavily affected areas are London, Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester and Plymouth — with other areas like Glasgow, Dundee and Belfast also reporting outages too.

On top of this, there are also problems being reported on O2 (Virgin Media's connected mobile network) and Tesco Mobile (who also uses O2 network). I can at least verify the O2 one and Virgin Media — currently using a VPN to report this outage.

How to work around it

So we found out when our content management system went down — after investigating it, it seems as if this was an issue impacting specifically team members using Virgin Media.

However, we've taken a look into ways to work around it, and it turns out using a VPN makes websites load on Virgin Media.

Now's a good time to grab one of the best VPNs.