Our BT numbers (2 lines) today have been constantly engaged both incoming and outgoing calls. All our neighbours have the same problem. Our local cash machines are down too. I have called BT using my Virgin Cable telephone and BT faults say there is a major problem on numbers 0207 which is most of London! It has been going on since about 11am today and still not fixed at 3pm. Has anyone else got problems with their BT land line on 0207?

Apparently there has been a fire at a major BT Exchange which is affecting a lot of businesses and banks. Don't know if this is what's happening with you.

Yep, major fire in the Paddington North exchange apparently - affecting broadband and phone lines for lots of users - broadband especially apparently is being affected at places across the country!

Thanks for the info. Yes I have just been told that a fire in Paddington has cut the power supply to the London BT exchanges covering West and North London (BT Tower?) The guy at BT says it is the most serious outage he has had to deal with in all his time working for BT. So we won't be able to use the credit card in the local Indian tonight as we don't have any working telephone lines!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03...e_house_burns/

looks like holy hell has kicked off..

That article is very useful. Congrats on finding it. Looks like it was a good idea to Port one of my BT numbers to Virgin Cable otherwise I wouldn't have a working phone. Even my Vodafone mobile says "network busy". I thought that was just system overload due to landlines being out but according to that article mobiles are affected too.

It seems like the redundancy wasn't very well organised. It's a major exchange that Vodafone and banks route through, who are now struggling to get things sorted.
BT have said a fix should have been in place from 16:15, can anyone confirm their service is back up?

Found this:

Following major flooding at a BT exchange in the Paddington area, tens of thousands of customers in parts of North and West London may be experiencing a loss of broadband and/or telephone service. Customers in other parts of the country may also be affected. We are currently working on restoring services to customers, however as this is a complex incident we cannot accurately predict when all services will be restored. We will issue further updates as the situation changes.

“Any customers needing to make calls to the emergency services who have a problem using their phones are advised to do so byusing their mobile phone, or alternatively by using a friend or neighbour's working phone.”

The firm also said that the Paddington fire and flood had affected no more than 30 exchanges.

Update
BT has clarified the chain of events. As it currently understands the incident, flooding caused an electrical fire. The fire brigade attended and "addressed" the fire, a spokeswoman said. The root cause of the major outage is thought to be the flooding.

No my lines are still dead. Having said that there has been a change. I used to get an engaged tone after dialling any number now I get "This is BT announcement. The Telephone network is busy at the moment. Please try again later. You have not been charged for this call".

Has MBORC been declared?

L/NPN is indeed a major exchange at the junction of Edgware Road and Euston Road with a great many circuits running through it and I frequently routed stuff through it. I remember going to meetings there and they always seemed to be testing the fire alarms in the middle of them, with recorded announcements seemingly made by the "mind the giap" man off London Underground saying, "May I have you attention please. Fire has been reported in the building" repeatedly.

This tendency to consolidate circuits in fewer and fewer buildings has been going on for some time, as BT is greedy to sell off its central London exchange buildings for cash. Wood Street was replaced by a processor buried in a hole in the road, the top floors of L/WEL [Marylebone] were turned into flats, and L/NAT [Moorgate] was vacated at great cost and speed because the City wanted to redevelop the site and get JP Morgan's in there. Then Morgan's spent all their money on Bear Stearns and that fell through, so the area is now empty and derelict. The building closure program has of course now been put on hold because of the downturn but no doubt it will continue when things pick up again.

I do not think MBORC has been declared on this, I belive it has on the bad weather up north.
Found this photo of the flood damage at Paddington, looks to be the main power intake room.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48879906@N05/4480812877/

Just got a text saying that they expect to fix the faults by 7th April! On another matter I just logged in to my BT account to see if any calls were charged over the last few days (I couldn't make any so there shouldn't be). I was amazed to see that I had only made 3 calls since the last bill on 10th Feb. This is not right so I can only assume that the billing computer has gone up in smoke too. I wonder if they have a proper back up?

How ironic that the BT building is called Burne House.

Yes, indeed, and it's in Bell Street.

When it was announced that phone lines in North and West London were affected by this it wasn't any surprise nor BT Broadband nor mobile phone networks that need to connect to a land line in those areas. What came as really peculiar factoid was that lines for Northern Ireland were routed through here. WTF do lines for Northern Ireland need to be routed through a Paddington telephone exchange in England?

It's called 'diversity' (no, not that sort). You send some of the connections around the straightforward route and some the long way round, so if Paddy digs a hole in the road and puts his pickaxe through the cable you don't lose everything.
With SDH and now 21CN equipment increasingly physical distance of routing doesn't matter as much as it used to.

The problem is that even with traffic diversity a major incident like this still has a major impact.

The reason why mobile phones are affected is because most mobile phone conversations are actually routed via landlines.

L/NPN is indeed a major site, so is Faraday, or Baynard, or Post Office Tower/Harrison Street, or one of the Sector Switching Centres. A problem in any of these is likely to have knock-on effects.

Absolutely.

The company I work for has had over 500 network elements affected by this just in L/NPN, without the knock-on effect to other sites and smaller exchanges. The problem now is waiting for everything to dry out before it can be assessed and repaired, so it will be on-going for a good while yet.

I suspect we may see some reassessment of network resiliency as a result of this.

Oh and I had visions of a "Stasi" style department in a Paddington basement monitoring all the calls made in Northern Ireland.

My BT online bill has shot up from the 3 calls the other day to a more normal 368! So they do have a backup system.

Is there any indication as to which London 3xxx, 7xxx and 8xxx number ranges were affected by this?

includes the following codes as affected: there are others but here are the 0203***,0207*** and 0208**** ones;-

0203033 0203073 0203075 0203076 0203112 0203119 0203122 0203144 0203181 0203204 0203205 0203206 0203214 0203219 0203229 0203230 0203235 0203238 0203268 0203275 0207052 0207093 0207121 0207159 0207165 0207168 0207209 0207221 0207222 0207224 0207225 0207228 0207229 0207231 0207233 0207237 0207240 0207243 0207245 0207248 0207250 0207253 0207256 0207258 0207259 0207262 0207265 0207266 0207278 0207283 0207286 0207287 0207289 0207292 0207307 0207317 0207319 0207321 0207328 0207329 0207332 0207340 0207351 0207353 0207354 0207355 0207357 0207358 0207370 0207371 0207372 0207373 0207376 0207377 0207379 0207380 0207383 0207384 0207385 0207387 0207388 0207389 0207394 0207399 0207402 0207403 0207407 0207408 0207409 0207412 0207419 0207427 0207431 0207432 0207433 0207434 0207435 0207436 0207437 0207439 0207443 0207447 0207449 0207460 0207467 0207474 0207476 0207478 0207479 0207481 0207483 0207486 0207487 0207488 0207491 0207493 0207494 0207495 0207498 0207499 0207511 0207512 0207513 0207515 0207516 0207519 0207520 0207534 0207535 0207536 0207537 0207538 0207563 0207565 0207569 0207580 0207581 0207582 0207584 0207586 0207589 0207590 0207591 0207600 0207602 0207603 0207604 0207606 0207613 0207616 0207619 0207624 0207625 0207626 0207629 0207630 0207637 0207638 0207647 0207655 0207681 0207689 0207691 0207692 0207702 0207706 0207713 0207715 0207719 0207722 0207723 0207724 0207725 0207726 0207730 0207733 0207734 0207736 0207738 0207739 0207794 0207796 0207799 0207812 0207813 0207821 0207823 0207824 0207828 0207833 0207834 0207835 0207836 0207837 0207839 0207851 0207858 0207881 0207907 0207916 0207924 0207925 0207928 0207929 0207930 0207935 0207937 0207938 0207976 0207987 0207993 0208177 0208203 0208232 0208269 0208290 0208301 0208309 0208330 0208342 0208346 0208366 0208368 0208371 0208394 0208398 0208399 0208400 0208408 0208420 0208421 0208423 0208427 0208445 0208449 0208458 0208466 0208467 0208502 0208503 0208506 0208520 0208530 0208538 0208543 0208547 0208549 0208561 0208563 0208567 0208569 0208573 0208574 0208577 0208579 0208596 0208604 0208605 0208606 0208621 0208653 0208655 0208657 0208663 0208668 0208671 0208675 0208677 0208678 0208686 0208687 0208688 0208691 0208692 0208693 0208694 0208697 0208699 0208704 0208723 0208726 0208731 0208732 0208735 0208741 0208742 0208747 0208748 0208749 0208754 0208759 0208769 0208770 0208785 0208789 0208803 0208805 0208809 0208834 0208838 0208840 0208842 0208843 0208846 0208853 0208861 0208864 0208871 0208874 0208877 0208878 0208892 0208896 0208897 0208905 0208908 0208916 0208940 0208942 0208946 0208948 0208950 0208953 0208960 0208962 0208963 0208964 0208968 0208969 0208974 0208987 0208993 0208994 0208995 0208996 0208998

Well, that should dispel the decade-old myth that 0207(sic) is inner London and 0208(sic) is outer London.

The tenth anniversary of the change to the single London 020 area code is next week.