91热爆

Scott, Edinburgh, The Real World
If anyone thinks that NTL, Telewest or any of the other Mickey Mouse companies would have a better system in place than BTs then I would suggest they're living in cloud coo-coo land. Why not try their service, after all the grass is always greener on the other side but don't come running back to BT if your legs fall off. Personally I hold Berti Vogts responsible.

Gemma, Gee Cross
where's the emergency back up plan? emergency plans need to be thought through! If you can't find the problem then what is stopping it from happening again somewhere else? Next time it could really affect someone in a life or death situation! What would they do then?

Chris, Manchester
I still cant believe people sticking up for BT! Wake up they are a multi billion pound profit turning company, they should have a better set up than this particularly regarding fire precautions such as CO2 or Powder.....even BT Admit it!!! Its incompetance of the highest order. Maybe if they spent more money on fire precautions and alternative network routing and less on the directors and pen pushers they wouldnt need to charge as much. Cheap....Cheap..Having a laugh line rental up to 拢10.50, call minder up May 1st, 1571 Personal message up May 1st 6p per '3 press' from 1471 1st August 118 500 40p connection 15p a minute! No sympathy for the company, only the staff who are being done over.

Gurvinder Singh Sydney, Australia
I have my business website hosted with one of the Hosting Provider in Manchester. I have been without email or website for the last 3 days and that's big loss for my business...

Chris, Berkshire
Erm, Iim finding something a tad confusing here. There are loads of peeps clamering at BT's throat, claiming that they have no phone, can't access the web etc. Well, you must have something that works or else you wouldn't be posting your comments on here would you! Well get over it. It'll be fixed as soon as they can get it done. Go for it lads & lasses, down in that tunnel. Just think of all the O.T available!!!

Matt (London)
It is not acceptable for a telecoms provider to not provide a service for such a long period of time for such a significant amount of customers. Where was BT's contingency plan? Seriously exposes a single point of failure for BT's network. Tough on the guys involved having to get the company out of this mess....

Chris (once again!) Manchester
PLEASE! Let's stop all this blame NOW! I am an IT Manager for a very large organisation in Manchester City Centre, and this is a big blow, but it's NOT BT's fault, nor that of anyone else. I'm actually surprised nobody's blamed Al Qaeda so far.... unless people believe BT are the "public front" of that organisation. This is an accidental disaster. NO IT manager worth his salary would plan for disaster recovery on this scale, as this is very unlikely to happen. Did everyone know of the tunnel's existence before this incident? Stop blaming the people who are fixing this problem, and do something else. After all, if you're all so busy planning for problems like this, why are you on here in the first place??? COME ON LADS! Manchester is behind your hard work and perseverance in this! Ignore the blame fanatics and carry on the hard work getting us back up and running!

Ben, Glossop
We should show our support for the guys who have worked non-stop all week trying to fix this problem. As for BT, they responded immediatly... how can you fault them there? Everyone is stupid to point the finger without knowing the facts!

Buxton, Derbyshire
I have to get in touch with some people in London. Its very important. I can't email them, I have to speak to them and i can't. I'm meant to be going to London on Saturday but if I can't get in touch with these people then i won't be able to. I'm probably going to have to drive for half an hour to get somewhere where i can get a signal. Very annoying.

ORWELL
I think we're all missing the point somewhat. A freak fire has wiped out communications over a large part of England, the consequences as we can see are not only confined to having no telephone/internet service. Cash machines are down, some companies cannot pay their satff, even food shortages are occuring. Surely this should be classed as a national emergency? But no, after one news story on Monday it seems the media have chosen to ignore this crisis and the suffering of the people. And instead the mood of those concerned seems to be "Blame BT!". Well I for one see this incident as a foretaste of things to come...any similar crises shall be swept under the carpet (unless this kind of thing was to happen in London!) keep the rest of the country ignorant. what does this remind you of? IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH!

Motard
Electric, Gas and Water are ESSENTIAL services. A phone line isn't. Perhaps those that are moaning about not being paid should have a word with their employer, and ask to be paid with a CHEQUE. Yes, a paper cheque. Remember them???

Ian, Manchester
A fair question does seem why is so much traffic (voice, data, radio) reliant on this single route considering all the banks, businesses, emergncy services which rely on it. So why does this route not have a backup to carry the same capacity if such a situation occurs. ISP's regulary route mission critical data traffic via multiple carries via different geographic connections to avoid such a single point of failure. If a simple fire in 1 tunnel can cause havock for days, just imagine what a terrorist could inflict by destroying a main exchange.

louise derbyshire
as a director of a small business experiencing telecomunication difficulties i thought well if you can't beat them join them and planned to go for a meal in china town. I was livid to discover that BT had not only knocked out my telephone lines but were also responsible for the closure of a large part of said eating zone !!!!! ps only joking good luck to those doing a great job in the tunnel.

Ste W, Manchester
Firstly I just wanted to echo what many people have already said. If your business was affected by the outages due to the fire then sack your Telecoms/Disaster Recovery/IT Manager (Especially the worried one at the bottom of the page) and your Internal Risk and Audit staff (if you don't have people like Risk and Audit then close this browser, and shut down your PC, you shouldn't be in business anyway!). Secondly, send the replacement staff to: http://www.drj.com and make them read!! It's your own fault for having no contingency. You can't rely on technology so much and not have a backup ! ! Also, BT's network is HUGE (I used to work for them), a mixture of datalines, telephone lines, thousands of switches etc so you have to allow for disasters like this to occur, it's not like it was their fault or that they aren't bothering to restore service as quickly as possible. I will LMAO at people who move providers due to this because BT lease most of their infrastructure to other Telecoms providers anyway, so they will be inherently affected (as pointed out by the NTL Engineer below). Lastly, I think people should spare a thought for the fire crews and the BT Engineers/Major Incident Team who are working hard to restore service. It could have been worse, people could have died!

gordon trenbath
i moved to the uk from kenya for a better life and now i cant contact anyone i think this is a disgrace i was once use to shouting across a sandpitt to speak to someone and now i usually pick up a phone or the laptop now im either gonna have to shout or possibly scream ..i am very annoyed!!!!!

Shining
I'm off to NTL!!

ben
some cut my phone line please i beg you

Laura, Beckford.
Moan Moan, Whinge Whinge, Blah Blah... Fair enough you guys are losing business, plenty of our customers are losing business, losing business = losing money which in turn makes people complain. Fair enough when there's someone to blame, but I dont happen to think there is. I wonder however, what the point is of all this complaining, by ranting and raving here, or shouting at call centre representative are you REALLY going to make the engineers work any faster? Are they going to think "Well Doug from Hazel Grove is complaining, maybe I should work a little faster and take less breaks?" They have been working around the clock as it is, do you not think they want this solved as well? Spare a thought for those who could not contact 999 when they needed. Re-connecting the emergency services was by a million miles the most important issue, business come a very definate second.

Katie
I think the lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Getting on your soap boxes about how minor an incident it is and how we should stop complaining that we can't use our phones for a few days. I would like to see your reactions if your business relied solely on this sort of communication, hmmm interesting. The rest of you, have obviously nothing better to do with your time anyway, and it would seem to me that whether your phones are up and running or not, you never appear to do anywork anyway!!! Yes, the lack of service is irritating, but let's remember, it affects lots of people in lots of different ways, and each individual has the right to voice this without being slated for it!! I say good luck to the BT guys who are working hard to fix this matter, and if you don't like it, get down the tunnel yourself and let's see how well you do!

Andrew, Buxton, Derbyshire
I represent a small business that is heavily reliant on normal voice calls. We have however been able to make other arrangements via mobile phone. What we have not been able to do is operate our banking system, which uses a modem. This means that our staff and suppliers have not been paid. We cannot move money between accounts and pay by cheque because our bank is also paralysed. I am astonished that BT has relied on a single cable route for a service that is so vital to so many. Most modern communication and distribution systems are designed to tolerate limited failures, but apparently not the telephone system, or indeed the local branch of our bank. This is not a criticism of the hard working engineers who install and maintain the telephone system, but of the system planners and managers.

Ex BT PCGT, Stockport
Most of us exBT and many of my current colleagues in BT saw this coming. There's simply no excuse and senior management have to appologise. The company has been cut to the bone recently (ironically by increased competition). The network should either go back into the public sector or be broken up. BT have to hold their hands up on this one.

Keith ex ntl customer
WELL DONE BT! i think BT have responded to this major incident with absolute dedication and proffesionalism.as an ntl customer the smallest of faults could take upto 2 weeks to fix depending on when an engineer was in your area.and trying to get any sort of update from ntl was impossible.Are all you whingers aware that ntl relies heavily upon the bt network to run their business.remember atlantic telecom who spent millions trying to provide an independant network! they soon went under.I would like to see the likes of ntl deal with such a disaster.we are already dealing with a fast deteriorating directory enquiries service from other companies.well done bt keep up the good workthanks to the fireman and the engineers for thier dedication.What would we do without BT?y

Pen, Buxworth
Cct London, I have got to defend my High Peak neighbour. By "Mickey Mouse" are you reffering to a service such as NTL that hasnt gone down????????

RAL - Old Trafford Worker
Will all the moaners get over yourselves! Yes this is a problem and yes businesses will suffer - BUT it is one of those freak accidents that no one can control and no amount of complaining will get it fixed any faster. Well done to the hardworking BT engineers who deserve a lot of credit rather than a slagging off.

Paul, Manchester
Let BT do their job, i have worked down those tunnels and trust me it aint easy. Working in a smoke blackened tunnel. These guys have to replace thousand of fibre lines and that aint an easy task. Bear with them they are working 24/7 to get it back up and running. Why dont you try living in some countries where the telephone network is no existent.

Doug, Manchester
It is disappointing to read some of the childish statements that people outside the affected area are posting. With out phones none of the shops or petrol stations can accept cash. The cash machines don't work, my closest branch is now closed. Electronic payments to our bank are not working, I havd to travel out of the affected area to get cash in order to get petrol last night, and we shared food with a neighbour who couldn't get food because she had no cash. It is frightening how much relaince modern society has built up in a few thousand yards of fibre cable. I am sure George Orwell probably predicted this one.

Malcolm, Aberdeen
BT does have firebreaks in place, these HAVE stopped much of the damage, so proper provisions HAVE been made. As to "the thousands of people leaving BT" I take great delight in advising you that all the other telecomms operators simply rent the lines from BT and all maintenance work is carried out by BT, that's why the line rental is cheaper and hence why services such as O2 are affected. If anyone has ANY idea how to replace 138000 fiberoptic line 30 ft underground, in tunnels filled with asbestos and smoke while in the middle of a densely populated area please feel free to phone.

Neko - Manchester
well, got my ADSL broadband (BT), up and running again tonight, cant fault BT on a job well done lads

Kymberlie, Derbyshire
Our complaints must be working! I'm at home in good old Glossop using my internet and able to call mobiles and London landlines from home. Shame my O2 networks still ballsed though, don't think I'll be hearing any job offers this week. I wan my mobile back!!!!

Kenny, Preston
rite things are going from bad to worse, first my goldfish died, now this....i was on first name terms with that '0898' girl as well, she was the dog and i was the fire hydrant....looks like il have no sex for a week, please get the phones back!

James (London)
Surely any decent business knows not to rely on one service provider for business critical applications. Nevermind BT's Business continuity, what about your own disaster recovery plans! Good luck to the engineers.

Stuart, Ipswich
I am amazed how much you people moan about this incident and BT's part in it. People have complained that BT is not managing the network properly. Does anyone have any idea how complex the network is ? BT are trying their best to sort this out I am sure. They are continually improving the network so your phone lines do not go down. An incident like this is completely unforeseen. Did anyone complain that BT was incompetent when lines went down in '87 during the 'hurricane'? In fact everyone was grateful of the speedy service they received. This is exactly the same. Remember BT is losing money every day these lines are down as well !

Rob, Rusholme
My service is now back to normal, after having no ADSL since the fire. Congratulations to the GM Fire Service, and BT, on getting the job done quickly. If it was only down for a matter of hours, people would still complain, but for what it's worth I'm very impressed!

C, South Manchester
Well said Phil, Manchester. Spare a thought for the elderly or vulnerable who need their telephone lines to be in touch with the world. Also, for all you looking for someone to blame or sue, have you never heard of accidents?! Who would you sue if an accidental fire took out the power to your home or workplace? You talk about BT's lack of back up facility - where's yours??!!!! Eggs and baskets have been mentioned - a purely IT based business is the epitomy! Please just hope for safety of the poor guys and girls trying to sort this out for us!

Icarus, Manchester
Telephone Ok, but no broadband, prefer the broadband :-)

Al - London
Oh honestly, what on earth is going on here?? Whilst I have every sympathy for people with their phone lines down, whether that be business or residential, voice or data, this is simply a cable breakdown of a size not very often encountered. Do you really think that BT are going to run a parralel cable on every route to be able to divert too, just in case something like this happens. Lets get realistic here shall we. You pay a relativly low price for your line (and before anyone shouts - look at the cost today in percentage terms against 30 years ago). If you are volunteering to pay about 75% more for your line to provide this facility, then please call BT and let them know, they will love you. Then spare a thought for those that are down the tunnels repairing the lines. I have done this type of work (in a previous job)when the tunnels are in their normal state and it wasnt pleasant. I can only imagine how bad it is in a post-fire situation. As for going to another provider - do you think they are immune from fires? Think again, this could happen to any provider, whether they be BT or NTL or TeleWest. BT have the best resource to deal with this type of major incident, and I am sure that they have mobilised all possible people to deal with it. You engineers in Manchester - ignore the moaners - I am sure you are doing your utmost to restore everyones service as quickly as possible - good on ya.

Rafe Nauen - Derby
Lost all the adsl lines I support aroun the UK - seems incredible tat this is theonly pipe - no backup!

Eddie, Stockport
I've just realised that I've had no spam for two days. Doesn't this kind of thing always happen when you want to buy buy Viagra from a dodgy foreign site... There shoul be some sort of emergency system to make sure we aren't deprived of spam.

C, South Manchester
I too have been affected by the fire in Manchester. It has made my job vurtually impossible to carry out, affected the business of my employers, stopped my monthly wages being paid and left me unable to dial out from my home phone. However, my overwhelming feelings are still thank goodness no-one was hurt and good luck and well being to the committed BT staff and emergency services risking a lot to sort this out. No-one is to blame, accidents happen!

Jay, Eastbourne
I cant believe all you people who are moaning about not having a telephone service... its a telephone line not a life support machine. I cant believe you are so worried about your personal life.. Take a step back think about the severety of it... its affecting more than 138,000 people some of those are desperate for the phone because they have life or death situations.. be greatfull you arnt one of these people. Even if you were one of these people there are plans in operation to help you.. There are engineers down that tunnel now actually trying to repair all the telephone lines, think of them for one moment they have to go down a tunnel which is really cramped and small, and probally is now smelling of charred burnt materials.. they are the people who i feel sorry for... I feel BT are doing there upmost to do anything possible for you all... WELL DONE BT!!!

Teacher Manchester
Give BT a break , so they had a fire so what it happens all the time to different people around the country all the time , they have either bussiness or home insurance , BT will get the service going again , but are all you moaning whiners out there going to thank the engineers that have had to go down there and sort this mess out , I think not , so stop harping on about this and that and let the engineers that know what they are doing get on with there jobs , cos at the end of the day some BT manager will come out of the wood work in his smart new suit and say it's all fixed without a word of thanks to the people down that hole .

Rashid, Bredbury
Plan for Disaster recovery. Business in U.K. should be spread out. Small Branches here and there. This will take a load of all types of conjestion. Think of other means of communication Satellites perhaps.

Brian, Worcester
It sounds ever so simple to fix a new piece of cable in to place! They first have to get sufficient cable. As for the people complaining that BT has stopped their web site working, I wonder why they didn't have a reserve site based somewhere else. Perhaps they didn't plan for network problems.

Eddie Stockport
I never thought I'd say I was happy to be with NTL, that is until now. Ask me again next week though...

IETF, Manchester
Where are your backup plans? How many of you 鈥淚T managers鈥� have been caught out by this? If you are complaining about how much money, business etc, this is costing your company, you obviously opted to save money on redundancy or maybe you are just complacent? Time to resign. If you worked for me I would not give you the chance to explain

Gordon (Leeds)
I must say we are feeling a bit smug. Ever heard of contingency planning or pure common sense? We lost our main ISDN connection but at least had the sense to retain some old modems and some dial-out telephone lines - so no big problem!

terry, High Peak
Vodafone service has just come back on here at 19000

Joe
Customers have been messed about far to much already. Many are driven up the pole on a daily basis by the sheer incompetence of BT Staff. All we can really do, at the end of the day, is vote with our feet.

Stephen, Edinburgh
Well, I would like to say that it is now the second day that I have been in work and got virtually nothing done. This isnt BT's fault in general but nearly every other Coms co. have a back up system or can re-route theire data/voice lines through other parts of the network. I hope they get something in place soon as I am one of the unlucky few that works for a service provider and as BT, Voda and O2 have all been affected by this, all these mobile phone owners assume that their phones will work. THey need to remember if it wasnt for BT and their exchanges, the mobiel network wouldnt work as how else do you get a land line from a mobile.. DOH!!

Joseph, Manchester
It just shows exactly where the West's biggest weakness is. Britain could potentially be crippled by a major strike to its communications networks.

Iain, Scotland
I'm a BT engineer, To all those complaining, this is a very,very rare incident. You know absolutely nothing about BT or it's network.You only think you do. This will be investigated at the highest level , but as of now BT engineers are bearing the brunt of this and will have service restored a.s.a.p. Probably sooner than you think. This time next week all this will have been forgotten.

Shining
How on earth can we blame bt? think about it..it was a fire ..when the city centre was bombed did we moan about the shops and everything else that was blown to pieces that it wasnt fire proof i can respect buisness's and anyone else being frustrated ..thats one thing but looking to point the finger is another accept it and just hope the engineer's can restore the lines as soon as humanly possible .. good luck down there guys.

Jon
So - have I got this right? Tomorrow is pay day & I might not get paid along with hundreds of others? Also, the councils won't be able to pay benefits, the emergency services have no proper cover and banks like Barclays & RBS can't pay their staff and you can't get money out of a cash machine, businesses are going down the pan coz they've got no email and phones & some have no websites and even major UK businesses such as power companies have been affected - no websites- and there's nowt on the main news? I suspect was this happening in London there would be nothing apart from this news!!!!!

Lee -Exeter
BT have no control over the fire, nor do they have control over the cause of the fire. Please lighten up and wiat for BT to fix the issue, They did not cause the fire to make mass destruction.

Tony, Cheadle
Being self-employed in my own business, when I was provisioning my most valuable tool that is my internet connection, I automatically went down the route of BT to provide me with my much needed connection, however I also realised the value of resilience given the business I am in network engineer/server intergrator, I also had NTL install 2nd telephone lines and internet connection, during the past 2/3 years of having this dual set of connections I relied equally on each of the connections during downtimes for both the NTL and BT connection, to the companies that say BT are incompetent take a long look in the mirror, you should have made your own provisions regarding resilience if the internet and outside connection is so important to your businesses you should have factored in an alternative, if I can afford it as a sole trader then a firm employing 20 people can afford it, get off the bandwagon and let BT sort the problems out, if fires were such an infrequent happening we wouldn't need a Fire service, I do however agree that information regards updates could be more forthcoming

Derbyshire
I do kinda feel sorry for BT. But they should have some backup for when these things do happen. Derbyshire is about an hour away from Manchester and we are getting hell. Our landlines are not working at all, our mobiles aren't working, the banks machines aren't working, we're only aloud a certain amount of food etc.. I know it looks like i'm being a bit of a moaner, but you have to admit that it is a bit annoying. Everybdy in the rest of the country don't know about it because its not even in the headlines. People around the country who are trying to ring us think that we've left the phone off the hook. I think it should be in the headlines so that people around the country know why they can't get hold of us!

Chris, Manchester
Who the hells fault is dit that the backbone of manchester runs through an Asbestos filled nuclear bunker......not mine! BTs planners should have had more foresight. Was it our fault that the Backbone set on fire? No...most likely enginering errors on BTs behalf. Theres too many dogooders in this country (oh you can moan, you cant say that) yes we can!! we have a right too! somebody needs to stand up and be counted, if people lose money or Jobs, its BTs network they are responsible for what happens, its nobody else fault. Yes accidents happen, but they havent taken suitible preventative measures, I dont care how much fire protection costs, on something so crucial it should be there......BT make billions 拢s profit Im not feeling sorry for them or their greedy shareholders! Also people who critise supposed micky mouse services (presumably ntl and telewest) I dont see their backbones setting fire..ive been a cable customer since the days of Nynex my phone has NEVER gone off! I only have sypathy for the BT Engineers who are most probably poorly equipped and payed, just so some co-operate bignose a BT Head office can drive a new Jag! Other than that I hope the company get screwed over and directors heads roll, too much cost cutting has gone (Indian Call Centres) maybee this is another result.

tony M/c
leave bt alone there doing there best those of you who think cable eg are better ha you wroung if this happens to them help you they dont know half the time were there backside is even after you tell them there cant find it and you think there would cope better noe hell NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John (Cheshire)
Events like these bring things into perspective, and makes us step back for a moment and look at how we all rely on things that we take for granted every day. Good Luck BT, and I think we should thanks to the Fire Service and Engineers for sorting out this mess.

Greg, Central Manchester
I've been looking at several well-known 'news' websites over the last few days and it concerns me that this doesn't seem to be classed as anything like headline news. People all over the country must be wondering why they can't contact friends, relatives, business contacts based in Manchester and the North-West and when certain websites (not this one!) class David Beckhams haircut as a bigger news story over 130,000 phone lines being out of use, it says a lot about the world we live in.

Alison, Cheshire
I think this has been a big wake up call to businesses within the area who have lost their phone connections. We can't solely rely on BT to support our businesses alone - we need to have a disastor recovery in place to route calls. We have lost our e-mails and also our website is down having been affected by the fire - we have learnt from this and are working to have this resolved by other means. I don't think that BT have done enough though in keeping all the public updated - there's nothing on the BT website - considering the number of lines down and the number of end users like ourselves using the Internet lines supplied by Manchester companies surely BT should be a little more supportive.

Cherry Orchard
Is this what it means to be British in 2004? A culture of blame and compensation? Just like the U.S.A? I for one think BT are doing a good job. Would you like to crawl down an asbestos filled smoke blackened tunnel on your hands and knees, wearing one of those hardhats with a torch on it?? I think not!

Duncan (Staffs)
It can cost up to 20k to put fire protection system in a 6ft x 6ft server room go figure how much it would cost to do a few hundred miles of tunnel ? fancy paying extra line rental ? As for a backup route, easy for telecoms, and voice calls not so easy for fiber links that provie ISP's and other telcos.

Cct London
So Andrea, High Peak - You'd leave BT because of a event that BT had no control over? Be prepared with a mickey mouse service (which you get when go for the cheaper option)

Andrea, High Peak
I assume BT will be giving compensation to those having to use mobiles at higher prices???? As soon as the phones are back up I'm going to be one of the thousands leaving BT.

Bob, Exeter
How amusing!! Lots of people talking about something they have hardly any knowledge of. Some of you should be politician. Go and get a life and stop whinging about things that are entirley trivial. These things happen. Grow up. It could be a lot worse, eh?

Mark Stockport
My Concern is not about the freak accident but mpore the risk to our businesses now that this sort of potential risk has been highlighted to the more unsavoury characters hiding amongst our communities. If it is this simple to knock out a major cities communications. What could a co-ordinated attack do to to us on a national scale? We are a small recruitment company (20 staff resorting to using our personal mobiles we have one intermittent line and we are losing business every day it continues. perhaps the government should spend 拢10m on an enquiry to find out why it happened?

Ruby Slippers
Whatever happened to the good old fashioned "Blitz" spirit we used to have during the war? We didn't immediately rush out and blame people did we? Well maybe we blamed the Germans but my point is, how can we blame anyone for a fire? It's just one of those things that happens naturally. God bless the brave engineers who have to go down the tunnel to fix the wires.

D.L.SMITH
I'm a telesales rep and very rarely do any work anyway, so its not making much of a difference to me. I hope the phone lines are back up soon so i can get on with my personal calls again.

Cheeseman, Bradford
One thing is clear, most of us are prisoners of our technology. DOn't know how it works, don't know what to do when it doesn't work, assume someone will make it all right if enough noise is made. All ripe to be hung by the feet and eviscerated by the big bad saucermen from planet X with their superior technology and weird alien ways....

foxybrown, planet earth
Bt are working very hard to restore service, remember the cause of fire has not yet been identified. i certainly dont envy the job of the cable jointers working in a dangerous environment getting hassle 24/7 when they are doing their best. people realy do take western world services for granted.

John large, Victoria Park, manchester
I think this is terrible on the part of BT. As a web designer i rely on my 1MB connection for work purposes. normally i would be fine with this issue however the Guardian tunnel system (which is used for the telecoms, built during the cold war) is one of three major internet backbones in the UK. it is a vital backbone to not only optical communications and ADSL. The use of ATM machines, In store POS machines (tills etc) radio channels, Cellular base stations (for mobile use and a whole array of other communications links. before the privatisation of BT they would have had a contingency plan which would have been implemented instantly, now they have reduced the amount of network engineers and inconvenienced us all. As for the lack of updates its apaulling. Roll on the flaming John

Andrew, Bradford
Sudenly Everyone is a network engineer!! Good excuse for a bandwidth upgrade on their insurance!!

Greg, Stockport
Its ironic that in the BT adverts, the woman who use to have a phone line with a BT rival would 鈥減ick up her phone in the morning and be unable to make any calls, it would sometimes not be up again until the evening鈥� that鈥檚 why she switched back to BT. The thing what annoys me is that in most BT adverts they completely boast that BTs service is 鈥�100%鈥� reliable and also BT give the impression that all the other phone companies out there are completely rubbish and unreliable. I鈥檓 with NTL for home and for business and never had a problem in the 3 years I have been with NTL.

busby
BT are issuing free mobile phones to customers affected by the crisis. Will they be top of the range ones that you can take photo's with? I doubt it. Personally I blame Sven Goran Eriksonn.

Andy UK
Imagine if people who are starving in the third world could read this message board, or people who have had most of their family killed in civil wars that rage around the world. Is losing a phone line for a few days that great a problem? People forget how lucky they are to even have telephone's and internet! Put some perspective on things for goodness sake people!

nikki, devon
i would like to point out as a bt employee that as yet the cause of the fire has not been identified and therefore there is little point heaping all the blame on bt when our engineers are underground working in dangerous conditions 24h to restore service and have adopted a sophisticated plan of restoration that will restore vital services as soon as possible.

Angry, Manchester
Of course accidents happen, but for those of you who find it amusing and are sitting back doing no work, don't be surprised when you are made redundant because the Company you are currently not working for is losing money. I assume most of you who are telling us to take it easy and get a life have been paid for this month. Some people are paid weekly and all electronically, would you like to explain to them why they may not receive any wages this week and not be able to feed their kids? This has not affected me personally, but I do work for a Company whom it has affected badly. Phone lines aren't just used for idle conversation, surfing the net and leisure activities, they are also used for businesses that keep people in jobs and to pay people who are out there working very hard.If everyone was paid electronically on a weekly basis, and your payroll office was based in the affected area, and your wages didn't arrive in your bank, I'm sure you wouldn't find it quite so amusing them, and furthermore you'd have no money to go down the pub with! Typical of some peeps, I'm alright Jack!!

Gemma Ashford
I think it is so great just sitting here getting paid for it. Just let the paper work buid up!!

Ric, Bolton
Why is everyone moaning? BT are a very reliable company, How many times have your phones been cut off? I bet not many times! Exacly! Not alot, so when the lines are down because of a electrical fault, You stab them in the back! Please get a life and stop critisising BT they are doing the best to get you moaners lines back online!

Ric, Bolton
This has come as a shock for me and my friend, as we were meant to be doing Work Experience on Monday through to Friday, but BT look to be doing their best to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Catherine City Centre
I don't think BT could be expected to legislate for this kind of thing (fires happen even to careful house-holders) - but I do think they need to think very closely about how they would cope with any terrorist attacks. But it just shows how fragile modern life is. I have no internet or phone at home (Wythenshawe), but everything is fine at work (City Centre). Pity it isn't the other way round really! :-))

Kevin Swindon
The reaches of this fire has even reached down to me in Swindon, On friday I transfered my website from its old server in southampton to a new company in Manchester since the fire I have not been able to access my my website nor have any of my customers, this has also had a drop on effect as I am a website design and hosting company all of my customers websites are also down. This is set to loose myself and my customers thousonds of pounds for every day the phone lines are down.

Mattthew Travelcare Ashford Tesco
We are all the way down in kent and the fire has effected all of our systems. So we hope it will be back soon as we have alots to do Matt in Kent

A BT Employee, North West
Hope the Network Planners who planned this route get what they deserve !! So much for resilience !!

Tim
Remember folks it's good to talk!

Chris- Berkshire
Why is it that folk like having a dig at B.T? Folk lose their electricity to their homes & offices due to serious storms. There is only so much companies can do to divert services, no matter who they are. If we had suppliers preparing for all emergencies, there would be a serious shortage of matierials world wide. By the way, those folk on here who are saying join another isp ain't on this planet. Changing ISP will only help if your desperate enough to have a different comms company supply the physical speech line to your home, such as NTL, which stands for 'No Telephone Lines'. Personnally I think BT are great, accidents happen, & how many of you have considered whether there was in fact anything BT could have done to prevent it? I doubt they could have avoided this unfortunate incident. I hope that no-one was seriosly hurt, engineer of fireman etc.

BT Man
BT to provide a back up system? Erm how do you expect that to happen? You want a backup? Then why dont you ring up BT and pay for the new cable, then pay for the engineers time to joint it. Think you can afford it? What a statement to make! Such a joke.....Accept its a FREAK accident.

Tom, St. Louis USA
I am here in the USA and we are used to Fiber Issues like these. I have worked for a Telco Company but now I work for a private company with interest in the UK. These things happen just be happy that the Fire Fighters and Techs have been able to get to the cable. You should see it when a Backhoe digs up a fiber cable in the middle of nowhere and it takes hours and hours to get people there. BT and your Fireman have done a terrific job at this issue. If it weren鈥檛 for the speed of fiber and the amount of traffic they can hold we all would be complaining about that. Unless everything goes wireless this will always be a problem. Remember this issue doesn't only affect your country and I am sure when it happens here it doesn't only affect our countries commerce either.

natalie manchester
to all u moaners. if your that bothered about it u go and have a go at fixing 130,000 phone lines if you think its that easy

Brighton
Northern Fools!

Richard, Huddrsfield
Why's it such a crisis if the phone lines are down - if we panic and become hysterical, terrorists will see this and know how weak we are! Surely we can survive without phones for a couple of days. Make the most of the time off work!

Dave Two-Scoops, A-U-L
I can't wait until they fix these phone lines - I can't connect to use my internet until it's fixed!!!

Phil
The people who are loving this because they've got no work to do are obviously employees. Just remember that the longer this goes on the more likely it is that you'll end up with a P45 because your company won't be able to afford to keep you on -so get your drinks in now while you can still afford it.

Al S, Hyde
I was going to mention something along the lines of distributed networks, redundency, decentralisation, inherent weakness etc etc, but it's already been done. For those who say take a couple of days off, I'd love to but I being self employed I need to earn money to pay the little things in life, bills, food.etc. For those who say use a different ISP, i'd love to but there is NO ALTERNATIVE to BT where I live. Cmon NTL, Telewest, Government we need more alternatives to BT's poor network infrastructure. BTW Nice job emergency services and BT engineers, I appreciate how difficult your work must be down there.

when I were a lad, manc
When I was a lad, we didn't have a phone at all. Still managed to live a nice life though - why all the fuss? if your business is suffereing, you should have gotten insurance against such eventualities, or specified service levels in your contract with BT (or other provider that routes through BT). If you can't use the internet - read a book. The only reasonable cause for complaint is lack of emergency services. You are all, by and large, whining idiots.

busby
Let me get this staight, there's this underground nuclear bunker under Manchester city centre which BT are using to put their cables in??? What happens if ther's a nuclear bomb dropped on Manchester? I hope we don't have to ring a BT helpline to get access to our safety bunker. Personally I blame the fire genies.

Mick
Why have we turned into such a blame nation! An accident has happended and all involved are doing the best to put us back to normal! if you can call us normal now we just like pointing the finger and claim compo of whoever we can! The fire service do a brilliant job and the Engineers will be working flat out (hope the records are up to date guys!) Fires happen, so lets all go home and check our smoke alarms eh?

Cct , London
Working for a ISP who has customers affected by this outage, I'd like to pass some information to clear some issues up. This is not BT's fault. This was caused by a fire 15m down, which does sound a touch suspictious. NTL use a BT core network, as do Energis and almost any other service provider in the Uk. To ask for a back up service for 30,000 lines?! This type of problem hardly ever occurs, and especially to the extend this has caused. Anyone remember the wheelie bin incident in Salford a year or two ago? That was the last "large" outage, but nothing compared to this beast of a problem. Haven't any of you thought about the emergency services radio being the main priority to fix. Business will come 2nd, home users 3rd. Guess its time for you lazy net users to get out in the open and enjoy the sun....

Rosebud, Midlandia
I used to work in the BT faults department, and when they say it will take a week to sort out they usually mean 2 weeks. Like lots of other people this has disrupted my working week, I can't do anything until everything is sorted. Am I complaining? No, this workaholic mania afflicted these busy busy types seems to have passed me by, look out the window and reach for the sun!

Anne, Manchester
How short everyones memories are! Anyone thinking they would be better off with another service provider should remember that BT customers were by far the first to be reconnected after the Manchester bomb in 1996 and we don't know that the electrical fire was BTs fault.

Will Johnson, London
I have been dealing with customers for the last two days regarding this outage. They are starting to get on my nerves. God forbid if anything every going wrong with a episode of Neighbours

Kirsty, Manchester
Escalate this is the correct spelling!

Mo, Manchester
I agree with Doug from Luton and everyone else who says "get a life!" what a whineing bunch of sad, sad people - things happen in life so get over it - and as for suing - that's just typical of the money for nothing jerks most people have become.

Mick Preston
Why have we turned into a nation of whingers, a blame culture that cannot be stopped by us who created it! Accidents happen people, and BT and all the other agencies involved are doing there best to restore all services. A

Big Company Monkey
Its great i don't have to do any work!!!

London
I Work for a Network provider in London. We have been working on this for the last two days. Please hurry up and fix this problem. Bert.

CR, Buxton
One of the main problems of the telephones being down is that all the banks have closed making it very difficult to get money.

Doug, Hazel Grove
I sympathise with BT over the situation, however I cannot understand why BT do not have any alternative routing to hand. Surely these cables are system critical and I can't think of any other utility which would not have a back-up. These are clearly major trunks which have been affected, not the cables and the end of the network. Bad show BT.

Diane, Manchester
No tesco delivery and now no cash machines working at the station!

Ade Luton
My new car could not get taxed because of this any one else aware of this problem. I was told 30,000 new cars will not be registered till April because of this PS not complaining just informing

Jemma Gor Mcr
Jim'll fix it

Scott Manchester
Boring, Boring, Boring. Most of you are BORING, need to get a life idiots. So what you can't make a phone call or surf you internet .Deal with it. Linda in Manchester is confused if you ask me... Lets hope the BT lads and ladies down the tunnel are OK..They need support not a slating from all you narrow minded idiots.... To all the BT engineer's Keep up the good work

Sharon, Salford
People shouldnt blame BT as it is not their fault.

anon
Salford council's websites are dead. That's what you get for using a single ISP. :)

Dave, Bolton
Linda, you chose to have everything with BT! Get a different service provider! That aside though, I do agree with Greg when he says they have us over a barrel. Virtually all broadband is owned by them and they are holding on to all the broadband exchanges and forcing extraordinarily high rental charges to the likes of NTL, who are then forced to lever the price onto us. The sooner Ofcom steps in the better.

Fitzsimons Insurance Stockport
No telephone system, Broadband and PDQ okay at the moment, mobile on/off. Most clients are local and will call into the office, only other contact is e-mail from website. Hopefully all will be sorted out in 48 hours not 7/10 days, pity that updated information isnot available on a website.

Richard, Manchester
BT have just rung me on my mobile to say that they hope to have much of the service restored by 8pm tonight (Tuesday)

Dave, Telecom Monitoring Station : Germany
Work began in the fire damaged tunnel just after midnight. Additional problems have been encountered with the identification of burnt off cable ends and debris within the tunnel which cannot be moved due to environmental reasons. The revised time for the start of splicing activity is now 0800. Full restoration times have not yet been established although focus is now being put on providing a full restoration plan which should be available later today. Currently priority is still being given to restoring community isolations and 999 capability. Parallel activity is continuing with attempts to bypass the damaged area by laying cables along a different route. It is predicted that this work will allow additional restoration capability by 1400 this afternoon. A total of 44 cables have now been identified in the failure. All necessary manpower resource and fibre cable is on available on site and restoration will continue on a 24hr basis.

Simon Stockport
Some very narrow minded people about you never give praise for a service which very rarely goes wrong but when it does boy do you lot come out of the woodwork as A BT customer I can honestly say they provide me with a first class service not one like cable which is down on a regular basis in 14 yrs with BT this is my 1st fault so no complaints here and a little patience to sort out what is a major incident would be a big help

Keith, Cambridge
I don't understand why they sent firefighters down there - "30m down and 150m along the tunnel" - why didn't they just close off the tunnel ventilation and wait for it to burn itself out? Seems silly to risk people's lives for a bunch of cables...

James, South Manchester
I can imagine being without a phone for a few days does irratate many of the readers of this site. Bet lets look at the bigger picture. We are in a state of high alert in the UK, with the most senior officer in brtish police force stating we are goign to have an attack sooner rather than later. This fire has shown the abhorrent weaknesses in our dated telecommunications infrastructure. One incident brings a city to its knees, 10 timed incidents brings a country to its knees. Add in a major terrorist attack would see our government unable to control the situation. Mass panic and hear say would spread, lives lost through lack on information and bad decision made through inaccurate or untimely data received. Some should be responsible for ensuring that loss of communications on this scale cannot happen, that is the person that should be sacked鈥� I guess there is no one person that carries that responsibility in the UK?

Rachel, Prestbury
The motorways are resiliant and so are the airports. If the m1 goes down you can cut across to the M6. If Heathrow closes you can use Gatwick etc. Why BT didnt think of this we'll never know.

annon, Midlands
for all those that are complaining that they are losing money and that someone else should run the network, STOP and THINK, any company including BT that would be capable of running the network of approx 60 Million lines in BT are in it to make a profit and pay their staff's wages, are you all willing to pay more each year for BT to provide a back up to 60 million lines in case just per chance their happens to be an incident such as this. I DONT THINK YOU WOULD.

Pete, Reading
It's interesting how many people are saying "hey live without your phone" it's not just the phone as a few people here have said. The problem is that a large number of companies around the world use servers in Manchester for hosting websites. Mine are down because of the cables being damaged. I have net access on a home ADSL line but I'm in reading so that's not surprising. The problem is my websites are inaccessible to customers and any e-mail sent is bounced back as the servers are uncontactable. I can't even phone the hosts to get an update on what they can do as thier phones are out... Now I'm not saying this is BT's fault, but I would have thought that there would be some redundancy, but there apears non. I'm also angry at the hosting company because they obviously had no redundant connections. Or maybe they did, but BT run them all together making it useless. My thanks goes to the firemen and engineers that are fixing this, but it doesn't help my business that is loosing money.

Richard, Westhoughton
I live in westhoughton outside bolton. I even use an NTL line, why is it that my phone does not work? Anyone got the answer fpr that one?

Darren UK
I work for BT and can assure everyone in the region that this matter is being taken extremely seriously, and many BT engineers are hard at work in a very uncomfortable environment trying to restore services as quickly as possible. It mustbe remembered that this is a fortunately extremely rare situation of a very serious nature, and will take some time to resolve - however back-up measures are being implemented, and work will be going on round the clock until everyone is back in service. In response to a couple of the comments above, I'm not sure what mr Blair could do to assist - I think his talents fall short of cable jointing - and I'm not so sure that the deregulation of our network would either prevent this from ever happening, or would help fix it - exactly which owner of which bit of the network would be stepping forward first to pay for it?

Neil, Manchester
i am a senior fault technician at ntl and if ntl customers think they are not affected by this they are mistaken. a great many of our customers are experiencing problems dialling out and receiving calls because a proportion of our traffic is routed through this part of the BT network. the knock-on effect for us has been very large indeed.

Worried IT Manager, Manchester
People who post comments saying "What are you complaining about?" clearly don't have income dependant on BT's provision. It's shocking that an entire citys communications provision can be routed through a tunnel with NO FIRE SAFTEY provision. We have a C02 systems, sprinklers etc protecting our data, but BT don't seem to think that other peoples data is worth protecting. Something must be done.

Roy, Hazel Grove
It seems it was an electrical fire and not an act of vandalism. If this is the case BT must pay compensation. Businesses should be able to claim as well as households having to use mobile phones at higher prices.

Charles Midden
How do we esculate? Does anyone know?

NTL GUY
You should all come over to ntl, we've got no problems

Chris
all the people who are moaning about BT employees who are coming online to leave messages really need to stop. I work in a BT call centre as do most of the BT people who have left messages. we are not Trained engineers and we do not have the ability to do anything about getting this fault fixed any quicker so i don't see how people can slate us for not doing any work. to be honest i'm on a break at the moment and i feel that i'm allowed to take the time to leave comments on the message board here. Do you think the Bt employees leaving messages on here have no dinner or tea breaks. get real! we aren't robots, We do Need to Eat and i'm fed up with people saying we are not doing a job. You try it. You try explaining to 140,000 people that our magic nuclear bunker tunnel thing can't cope with a little fire and then tell the pregnant mothers, the cronically ill and the genuinely needy people who need their fones that We don't know how long it will take. You sit there in your office surfing the web, drinking your coffee and smoking your cigars, spare a thought for those who actually need their fones and us who tell them they can't have Them...Have IT!!

Al
Doug, Luton said: "You're all a bunch of moaning idiots.. (Apart from those without bad comments, sorry!) So what you've not got your phone for a couple days..." Have you stopped to think about the implications on health and safety? How do people call the emergency services, doctors etc if there aren't any phones...?

JP - Sheffield
This situation is causing problems throughout the uk in one way or another but you can hardley expect them to solve the problem overnight, i mean come on, its like having your house burned down and expecting it built and ready for you to spend the following night.

phil, Mannchester
Why escalate to Tony Blair? what on earth has a fire got to do with any politician?

M M M M Monkey
Hmmm, escalating it to Tony Blair? And what if that doesn't work? Maybe the big guy upstairs could lend a hand.

John in Garstang
It hasn't affected me at all. I have never understood why people want to crowd together in a big city. There is a saying about putting all your eggs in one basket...

Linda, Manchester
I think it's sick! BT are making a fortune out of all these calls we are making and when it comes to it they won't spend a penny on improving our telephone services. I am suffering from not being able to use the internet. My mobile also does not work as it is an O2 mobile, BT will also not supply me with broadband and I think it is pure sick!! I think that BT should get there act together and do somthing about it instaed of putting peoples lives in danger!

Kymberlie, Derbyshire
I can only get mobile phone signal and internet while at college, things just go from bad to worse when it comes to these kind of things. Whic daft people don't have back-up systems on this kind of level! Hopefully BT will let us call out from our homes by the end of the week. Thank God no-one has had a bad accident!

Arthur, Benchill
No telephone but the broad band is ok!

Chris, Manchester
Looks like the BT lines might be out for up to two weeks. Presumably they will offer some sort of compensation to pay staff who can do nothing. Luckily I Use NTL at home and thats working a treat :D so i suggest those who need a phone get in contact with them! As for business lines, do NTL use their fibre network or BTs? anyone know? Looks like good business for them anyway if we take our 拢5000+ a month telephone package across!

Nicola,Wythenshaw
Could we not esculate this problem to Tony Blair

James, Warrington
How can people comment about their internet problems if they haven't got their internet working?

Nicola, wythenshaw
Could we not esculate the problem with BT

Greg
No two ways about it. We've all been let down by BT. First they endanger life and limb by not having any back up then all there workers spend time on the chat rooms trying to justify it. The sooner the network is de regulated the better. They have us over a barrel at the moment.