Downtime bedevils Demon Internet customers

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 15 Jun 2009 at 14:19

Demon Internet customers are up in arms following huge disruption to the company's ADSL broadband services.

Customers claim that the company's ADSL service has been choppy over the past week. A trawl of Twitter reveals that ADSL lines were down for several hours yesterday morning, while others are experiencing ongoing problems today.

Demon's service status reports ongoing issues. A message posted at 10:40am says the company is "currently experiencing high call volumes".

"If you are a broadband customer and are still experiencing issues, please reboot your equipment before contacting us," the message adds.

A subsequent message posted just after noon states: "Some broadband customers may be experiencing internet connectivity issues. Engineers are investigating."

Speed issues

PC Pro reader Graham Sinclair says he's been suffering from sluggish speeds on his Demon connection since last week. Print consultant Sinclair relies on a steady broadband connection to send and receive large graphics files from his base in Somerset, but today he's struggling to even connect at all.

"My connection speed is normally 6.5Mbits/sec," Sinclair told PC Pro. "The last week has been particularly slow. Today it's non-existent or between 0.2 and 0.3Mbits/sec. The upload is faster than the download!"

Sinclair grew so frustrated at Demon's failure to answer its support lines that he called the company's head office. "The girl who answered said 'not another one'," Sinclair reports. "She said 'last week was a nightmare. The telephone system was completely flooded'."

Demon was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.