topic Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting in Broadband

Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:57:52 GMT

Hi all, I'm after some advice please.

Our broadband went down on Good Friday, we saw a CityFibre van in the street with some guys working on the telegraph pole so assumed it was all in hand, however 2 weeks later we still have no service.

It showed as a local outage in my Sky account and after a few days of no service (allowing for the bank holiday weekend) I raised it as a complaint directly, however after several chasers the replies from Sky are flimsy at best. Basically all they are able or willing to tell me is that City Fibre are aware but they've not had an update from them since the 3rd April (i.e. the day the outage started).

All our neighbours services seem to be working fine, I'm starting to suspect they fixed the original problem but have somehow left my house disconnected and don't seem in any hurry to rectify it.

What are my options other than to just wait it out and raise a case with the Ombudsman after 6 weeks if it's still not resolved?

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Daniel0210 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:19:41 GMT

@Greg_I wrote:

other than to just wait it out and raise a case with the Ombudsman after 6 weeks if it's still not resolved?

@Greg_I
Once aware Sky usually quote 2 WORKING DAYS as a potential fix time due to the service level agreement in the UK between ISPs and Openreach for fixing a fault.

Some repairs take longer, for example when a pole or cabinet has been damaged or Openreach / City Fibre need to dig the road up (once they’ve obtained permission from the local council).

▪️

This link explains the Ofcom agreed auto compensation scheme which Sky operates for when there is a TOTAL loss of Sky Broadband or Sky Talk for UK customers.
https://www.sky.com/help/articles/auto-compensation

If you have a total loss of service and it isn’t fixed after two full WORKING days from when Sky are notified of the fault, you will become eligible for it.

From Ofcom’s website:~
If your broadband or landline service stops working, you will have to report the fault to your provider. If the service is not fixed after two full working days, you would not need to ask for compensation or contact your provider again, as your provider has systems in place that mean you will start receiving compensation automatically if the repair takes too long.

This auto compensation is applied 30 days after the fault has been repaired and will come in the form of a credit appearing on your Sky account (from April 2026 the rate has increased to £10.34 for every complete day).

▫️There is no equivalent scheme in place for customers in the Republic of Ireland.
▫️There is no automatic compensation for TV services affected by a broadband problem.
▫️Sky broadband being discussed here is a domestic service therefore whilst it's fine for customers who work from home to use it for that purpose they won't receive additional or quicker support.

▪️

Sky have up to 8 weeks to resolve it or you can then request a deadlock letter potentially allowing you to take it further.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:43:45 GMT

Thanks for the reply but it doesn't really address my concerns.

It is now significantly longer than the standard 48hr SLA so surely we're owed some kind of explanation?

I get that some repairs will take longer than the 48hrs, that's understandable, but the fact that Sky can't give me any reason why this is after a full two weeks gives me the impression that it has somehow fallen through the cracks. Do Sky not proactively chase CF for updates or vice versa? A day or two I can maybe understand but two weeks with no new information whatsoever is ridiculous.

I'd like to be able to escalate this to get assurance it is actually being addressed rather than relying on Sky's copy and paste responses that frankly give the impression that it is not.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Daniel0210 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:48:55 GMT

@Greg_I

By all means contact Sky and ask them to chase for an update but if City Fibre are anything like Openreach updates to Sky will be somewhat lacking. Unfortunately Sky can only tell you what they've been told.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:56:35 GMT

Is there any contact route other than the regular complaint form?

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

TimmyBGood — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:16:05 GMT

@Greg_I wrote:

It is now significantly longer than the standard 48hr SLA so surely we're owed some kind of explanation?

Perhaps note that's the Openreach target time to resolve domestic broadband issues as agreed with Ofcom, and absolutely not a Service Level Agreement between an ISP and its domestic subscribers.

https://www.openreach.com/about/our-company/our-performance-faqs

Actual SLAs typically come with business leased lines at an interesting monthly cost.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Chrisee — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:11:36 GMT

@Greg_I when Sky started using City Fibre last year I hoped they would have a better service level than Openreach who can be dire. Unfortunately going by reports in the forum including your's that was a false hope.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Me134 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:48:40 GMT

@Greg_I wrote:
Is there any contact route other than the regular complaint form?

Have you tried the complaints form yet? I think that's your best (and possibly only) option at the moment. I know it's frustrating but you may never get a "reason" for it.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:07:40 GMT

Yeah, I raised a complaint through the form which then turned into an email conversation with the support team, for all the good that's done....

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:14:30 GMT

Whether it's an SLA or not isn't really the point, the issue is I've been without any service at all for over 2 weeks and if they're setting the 48 hrs as a target/SLA/whatever there should be a good reason for it to take so much longer than that and yet I'm completely in the dark.

I wouldn't be anywhere near as bothered about the situation if they just said "sorry there's been X issue and it'll take Y weeks to fix" but instead we've just got radio silence, which after 2 weeks of me chasing is frankly terrible service.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

TimmyBGood — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:19:44 GMT

@Greg_I

It does make a difference though: a Service Level Agreement has contractual status.

Unfortunately a significant proportion of the relevant legislation and consequently a large chunk of Ofcom policy, practice and regulation essentially pre-dates the internet being important for anything.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Sky1011 — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 12:19:40 GMT

@TimmyBGood wrote:
@Greg_I

It does make a difference though: a Service Level Agreement has contractual status.

Unfortunately a significant proportion of the relevant legislation and a chunk of Ofcom regulation essentially pre-dates the internet being important for anything.

This is unlikely to be true.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

TimmyBGood — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:44:14 GMT

@Sky1011 wrote:

@TimmyBGood wrote:

@Greg_I

It does make a difference though: a Service Level Agreement has contractual status.

Unfortunately a significant proportion of the relevant legislation and a chunk of Ofcom regulation essentially pre-dates the internet being important for anything.

This is unlikely to be true.

When the Communications Act (2003) from which Ofcom largely derives its powers was being drafted, 56Kbs dial-up modems were more common than ADSL and the great majority of households didn't have either.

I'd draw your attention to there being an essentially uninforceable two day target for fault fixes (not including weekends and public holidays) on a utility which most people would probably now consider to be critical as a prime example. Openreach reports to Ofcom that they meet this target for around 85% of faults, but there's no absolute requirement for resolution other than the Universal Service Obligation which doesn't have a timeframe attached at all.

That 'the internet' largely happened by accident and regulation has been trying to catch up ever since is, I would suggest, widely recognised.

Re: Broadband outage - 2 weeks and counting

Greg_I — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:12:55 GMT

Update - my wife managed to get hold of either CityFibre or someone at Sky who deals with them, to be told there is no local outage after all and the issue has now been reassigned as a single line fault into our house. CityFibre were apparently not aware of this until this escalation, as there was no outage showing from their side.

So all the spiel we'd been given by Sky customer services that it was being resolved in the background was bull****, and I don't believe anyone at sky had proactively engaged with CityFibre at all before today.

At least it seems that we're finally getting somewhere to get back up and running, but I can't help feel that the last 2.5 weeks of chasing have been a complete waste of time.