How To Fix Sky Orange Face

Sky broadband and home phone services down for hours for thousands in south east England, Leicester and Wales

Updated 3 September 2021 | Created 2 September 2021

Sky broadband and home phone customers face outages across south east England, Leicester and Wales today, the telecoms provider has confirmed. It adds that it's investigating the problem and is working to restore service as soon as possible.

Update: 3 September 2021: Sky says the outage was fixed for the "majority of customers" last night, and services in affected areas should be back up and running as normal. However, there are still hundreds of people complaining about their Sky service still being down on Down Detector this morning. Others are also still complaining of problems on Twitter today.

Problems were first raised early on Wednesday evening (1 September) and by 9.40pm over 2,321 households reported an issue to Downdetector - a website that offers a real-time overview of issues and outages. There were more than 1,300 reports of problems on the site at midday today, while Sky says the outage is still ongoing as of 3.23pm.

You can check the status of Sky's service in your area by using its service status tool. Sky adds that you can also use the 'My Sky App' to check for updates.

If you're unhappy with your broadband or home phone service and you're thinking of switching, see our How to find cheap broadband deals guide and our Broadband Unbundled tool to compare broadband, phone line and TV packages.

'Sky broadband down'

A number of people have complained about the Sky outage on social media, here's a selection of some of the reports we've seen on Twitter:

@SkyUK when are you sorting out the outage in Wales? It's been off since last night. Not good enough.
— Gail Hughes #IAmOrganic🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 (@GailEHughes) September 2, 2021

Anyone else having issues with their Sky Broadband this evening? Everything is working except orange light on router indicating no broadband connection 😡
— Powered by Tea (@zeetha) September 1, 2021

You're entitled to compensation if your service is down for two working days - but you can still complain in the meantime

If your broadband or landline service stops working, you should report the fault to your provider. Under communication regulator Ofcom's rules, if the service is not fixed after two full working days you should receive compensation automatically. You will receive an initial £8.06 if the service is not fixed two full working days after you report it, and then £8.06 for each full day it is still not fixed after that.

However, if the issue is fixed within this two-day window you can still complain to Sky if you've been inconvenienced by the outage as it may be able to offer support on a case-by-case basis. If you're unhappy with the response you do get from Sky, or you don't get one within eight weeks, you can take your complaint to its ombudsman; CISAS.

What does Sky say?

A Sky spokesperson said: "We are aware of issues impacting Sky Broadband and Talk customers in Cardiff and parts of south east England. We are investigating the issue and we're sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing."

Sky's customer services team added on its social media account this afternoon:

ℹ️ UPDATE : South East England, Leicester and Wales

We are aware of issues impacting some Sky Broadband and Talk customers in South East England, Leicester and Wales. We are investigating the issue, and we're sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing.

— Sky Help Team (@SkyHelpTeam) September 2, 2021