Virgin Media TV suffered a major crash on Sunday afternoon, leaving thousands of customers without service. The outage, which began around 16:00, was most heavily felt in London, Bournemouth, and Portsmouth, according to outage tracker Downdetector, which recorded over 2,000 complaints.
The disruption coincided with the Six Nations rugby match between England and Ireland, sparking fury among viewers. Many took to Twitter to express their frustration, with one user, Damian Mayo, writing: 'So the one thing I actually want to watch all week and... Virgin stops working for terrestrial TV. I just want to watch England v Ireland!'
Virgin Media acknowledged the issue via Twitter, stating they were 'aware of the issue and we are making sure that we are on top of this,' but did not provide a reason for the crash. Their website displayed a message saying they were 'making some essential changes.'
A Virgin Media spokesperson later confirmed: 'We're aware of an issue affecting broadcast TV services for some customers in Basildon, Croydon, Cosham, Poole and Southampton. Broadband services are unaffected. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and our teams are working promptly to resolve the problem.'
By around 16:40, the number of reported problems had decreased significantly, with issues mostly concentrated in London and the south coast.
