Apologise for the lateness of this update. As you may imagine, BT faults management are very busy today with this major service outage.

We have gathered the following information from BT:

Around 11am this morning, a tunnelling machine operated by a third party dug through the 250-odd fibres that link Leytonstone, Poplar and Deptford exchanges together. Poplar in particular services the London Docklands area, in which a majority of the UK's internet infrastructure is located.

New replacement fibre has been laid into the ground and splicing of the old and new fibre has now commenced in a prioritised order.

Emergency service circuits will be reconnected first and then customer circuits should begin to be spliced from around 01:00.

We have also had confirmation on the estimated time to repair. BT are still saying that the that the estimated repair time is 24 hours from 18:00 this evening, however they also have said that individual circuits will start to work as and when the relevant fibres are connected.

BT expect all splicing to be completed by morning, though they cannot guarantee this due to the nature of the work required.

Customers with redundant connections into our network should note that they are also "at-risk" to further fibre break until this work is completed.

We will remain in contact with BT throughout and update accordingly.

The next update will be at 08:00, or earlier if there are further developments.

Regards,

Comtec Network Operation Centre