Updated UK telco BT is suffering a major broadband outage: it appears the comms giant is caught up in a near-nationwide blackout, with more than 12,000 reports of service problems on Down Detector.

The web connectivity monitor has been flooded with complaints from vast parts of the UK, from London and Birmingham to Manchester and Glasgow.

One Reg reader wrote in to say: "We’re a [managed service provider] and most of our clients just fell off our monitoring platform! Service status has dozen of exchanges as being impacted. Total disaster for us!"

Another wrote: "BT Infinity is experiencing a massive outage at the moment. Connections are still established but no data is arriving from BT."

According to one reader the business has been having problems since 14:15. "I know of three connections in WC1 and N4 which are completely dead – although I've others in SW2 which are fine," he said.

Another reader reported that they had lost their VPN connection, "BT.com cannot be reached," he said.

Customers also took to Twitter to complain:

Wow BT having serious Internet problems also https://t.co/MBabIp7aT9 looks broke. — Kaz Patwa (@KazP) February 2, 2016

Wow BT having serious Internet problems also https://t.co/MBabIp7aT9 looks broke. — Kaz Patwa (@KazP) February 2, 2016

@BTCare are there service problems in Cheltenham? My BT home hub broadband light is orange and I have no internet — Katie Smith (@Katies369) February 2, 2016

The Register has contacted BT for a comment. ®

Updated to add at 1730 UTC

A spokeswoman for BT told us:

Large numbers of customers have been experiencing temporary issues with their broadband services this afternoon. Customers can still receive and make calls as normal. We’ve been working hard to fix the issue and are glad to report that nearly every customer affected is now reconnected, approximately two hours after the problem started. We apologise to any affected customers for the inconvenience. There is no evidence at this stage to suggest that we were subject to a malicious attack.