BT restores broadband service after outage leaves thousands struggling to access the internet

An outage to BT's broadband service left many users across the UK struggling to access the internet.

The UK's biggest internet provider reported outages in several areas at around 9.30am.

A spokesman said the problems appeared to have mainly affected London and the South East - but the website Down Detector received thousands of reports not just from the capital but from cities including Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Leicester.

BT's customer support said on Twitter that it was attempting to restore the service as quickly as possible and confirmed by Wednesday afternoon that the issue had been resolved.

Thousands of people around the UK have been affected by a BT broadband outage. Credit: PA Wire

Earlier in the morning, scores of disgruntled customers had taken to Twitter to voice their frustration.

The outage comes a day after MPs warned BT that it must "put its house in order" or face a break-up after failing to invest in its Openreach network arm potentially to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds a year.