A major technical failure has left thousands of Sky TV customers across the United Kingdom without television and streaming services, sparking a wave of anger on social media.
Widespread Disruption Across Major Cities
The Sky TV outage began in the early hours of Saturday 10 January 2026, with problems starting before 3 am. The disruption reached its peak just before 7 am, when tracking service Downdetector recorded over 8,000 individual reports of issues.
Reports indicate the problem is widespread, affecting viewers in major population centres including London, Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham. Data suggests that approximately 8 per cent of impacted viewers experienced a total blackout, with screens going completely dark.
Customer Fury Over "Unacceptable" Service
Frustrated customers have taken to platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook to vent their anger, labelling the prolonged loss of service as "unacceptable." A common complaint among users is the perceived lack of communication and updates from Sky regarding the cause of the problem or an estimated time for restoration.
Many subscribers have pointed out that the outage occurred during a weekend, a peak time for television viewing and streaming, amplifying their irritation.
History Repeats: Echoes of Previous Failure
This is not an isolated incident for the telecoms and media giant. The current widespread outage follows a remarkably similar technical failure in May of last year, which prevented tens of thousands of customers from watching television.
The recurrence of such a significant service failure within a relatively short timeframe is likely to raise serious questions about the resilience of Sky's infrastructure and its contingency planning for major technical faults. Customers are now awaiting a full explanation from the company as engineers work to restore services nationwide.
