Homes hit by internet meltdown

THOUSANDS of homes across Scotland were left without broadband internet after a BT point went into meltdown.

Customers on the east coast and in parts of Dundee, Aberdeen and the Highlands were particularly affected by the fault, though problems were reported in several towns areas the country.

Around 20,000 homes throughout the UK lost their service on Friday night because of a problem at an Edinburgh exchange. A number of other exchange points are also through to have been affected.

BT engineers fixed the piece of faulty hardware early yesterday morning and broadband service has now been fully restored.

Several customers said their businesses had been affected by the error. Calum McDonald, who runs an online business, Highland Wifi, in Skye said he was concerned about the lack of information provided by BT regarding the breakdown.

He said: "We have eight sites across the Highlands and I was notified that they'd all gone down, so I realised it was a big problem. We offer a wifi hotspot service and none of our customers in Arisaig, Dornoch, Gairloch, Dunvegan, Uig or Portree could access the service."

A BT spokesman confirmed the problem had been fixed and said full services had been resumed. He said: "Some broadband services were affected between 7pm on Friday and 2am on Saturday. Phone services were not affected. Problems were reported along the east coast and in parts of Dundee and Aberdeen, but there were patches all over the country. We apologise to any customers who were affected"