Congestion strikes British Telecom

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

According to the BBC, two out of three main switches which handle 0800 and
other national numbers crashed on Friday.  This lead to congestion on numbers
used for help lines and dialup lines for Internet service providers.  Due to
BT charges, most british ISPs use special numbers instead of local numbers.

ISPs said they didn't get a lot of phone calls from customers complaining.
But since ISP customer service numbers tend to be 0800 numbers (similar to
1-800 numbers in the states), more than likely even if customers wanted to
complain, they couldn't reach the ISP.

I couldn't find any information about the outage on the BT web site, but
BBC has the story at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_657000/657449.stm

Yes, I know the telephone companies pride themselves on the unfailing
nature of their networks.  They never crash, just a bit of congestion.

However, if you are using one of these new-fangle 800 services, I suggest
you also have a regular international direct dial number for your customer
service and network operations centers.