6:15pm UPDATE: Virgin has now confirmed tonight’s issues which seem to be affecting parts of London.
In a statement, the broadband firm said: “We are aware of a power issue impacting our services for customers in some parts of London – this is not a nationwide issue.
“Engineers are on-site and are working to restore services as quickly as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
Original story: Virgin Media customers are facing an afternoon without broadband as a major outage appears to have hit the popular service.
Some broadband users appear to be without any internet access right now with areas including London hit by the issues.
Hundreds of customers have reported issues with the service with many suffering from the outage since around 4.40pm this afternoon.
Independent website Down Detector, which monitors issues across the web, has received hundreds of reports that Virgin Media is down.
The outage tracker monitors social mentions around certain topics to detect when services go down across the world.
The Down Detector outage map shows huge parts of the UK including London and Birmingham are being hit by the problems.
Frustrated users have also taken to social networking sites today to voice their annoyance at the outage.
One user tweeted: “@virginmedia internet down also in Heathrow area! Been like it for about an hour now! We’re getting close to having to talk to our kids. Please fix it ASAP”
While another posted: “Internet is down in W4, I’m trying to work! No updates available and your site and app aren’t working!.”
Some customers are also complaining that they can’t access the status page on Virgin’s website or call the helpline.
One user said: “What’s going on @virginmedia? Internet down so check your website, service status page not working so call 150 and that’s not working either!”
And another added: “our network is down in our area AGAIN! Your service status webpage is also down as are your phone lines!”
The news of this outage is unlikely to please many customers who have recently been hit with higher prices.
The broadband, TV and telephone provider has added between £2 and £4 to monthly bills with the average rise across the UK costing customers around £2.20.
“Increasing prices is not a decision which we take lightly,” Virgin Media said in a statement.
“We work hard to keep our prices competitive while continuing to invest in our network and improve the services we offer our customers.
“This year’s price increase is lower than last year while broadband usage on our network has increased by almost 40% in that time.”