10.49 UPDATE. Virgin Media subscribers lost access to their cable TV service in the middle of primetime on Thursday evening. Problems were first reported at 21.28 and, although some services returned within the hour, continued into the early morning when TV channels were finally restored.
A spokeswoman for Virgin Media confirmed that a high-voltage electricity supply fault interrupted television services from the Langley distribution centre. “Around 220 channels went off-air. Engineers managed to restore partial service by 10pm, including terrestrial TV, regional TV and general entertainment channels. Sky premium channels were restored at midnight, with all television channels fully restored 30 minutes later. Our on-demand television services were restored by 7am this morning along with the electronic programme guide (EPG) soon after.”
Outages were reported from around the UK with the problems affecting both analogue and digital TV services. It is unusual for a problem to impact on such a wide area and such a large number of channels.