BT techno gaff takes SMEs offline

A major BT router breakdown in Reading has left businesses with inaccessible websites and no email access since Tuesday morning.

Subscribers to the ISP Fasthosts.co.uk, widely used by web designers who rely on the BT-underpinned service for their web-hosting business, are furious they haven't been able to gain access to online resources since 05:00GMT yesterday.

Alan Coxon, MD of web design firm Coxon's, said: "Having tried to upgrade the service, BT has in fact made a total mess. IP addresses that run through Fasthosts are knackered, leaving potentially thousands of websites offline."

The claim was backed up by Ian Harrison, technical director at design firm Hartech Deign, which had a flood of inquiries from 20 to 30 customers demanding to know where their websites had gone.

He added: "We have an excellent service from Fasthosts, but as usual BT has let down ISPs, like they've always done."

He pointed to one of the firm's customers JoeBrowns.co.uk - a clothing retailer which had spent a lot of money on a major ad campaign recently was also offline, leaving them extremely unhappy.

A spokesman for BT said: "We tested the router yesterday morning and found it was fine. But, since then it hasn't been working. We are still hard at work on it, but there is a bit of a problem that we haven't yet found the cause of."