Major Internet Outage Hits London; Community Fibre Struggles to Restore Service

2025-03-02

Thousands of London residents and businesses were left without internet access following a major outage affecting Community Fibre, one of the city’s largest fibre internet providers. The disruption began around midday on Monday, with over 10,000 users reporting issues on Downdetector, a website that tracks service outages. Community Fibre, which serves more than 1.3 million homes and 185,000 businesses across London, confirmed the outage and stated that engineers were working to resolve the issue as a top priority.

The company acknowledged the disruption on its service status page, apologising for the inconvenience and assuring customers that efforts were underway to restore connectivity. Social media platforms were flooded with complaints from frustrated users, many of whom were unable to work or access essential services. Some customers reported being offline for nearly three hours, with no means of contacting the provider as their phone lines were also affected.

Technical solutions emerged from affected users, with some suggesting that changing DNS settings to Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8) could temporarily restore internet access. Community Fibre later confirmed that the primary issue was related to its DNS service and stated that progress had been made in restoring connectivity for most customers. However, the company emphasised that efforts were ongoing to ensure all users were back online.

The outage sparked widespread criticism, particularly as Community Fibre had earlier posted about “Random Acts of Kindness Day” on social media, prompting users to sarcastically request the restoration of their internet as a “random act of functionality.” The company responded by directing customers to its service status page for updates. While the issue has since been resolved, the incident highlights the challenges faced by providers in maintaining reliable connectivity for their growing customer base.