BT apologises to Infinity customers after dramatic drop in speed

A fault on BT's Infinity broadband service meant users paying for promised speeds of up to 40Mbit/s saw the service reduced to a paltry 2Mbit/s, leading to hundreds of complaints.

The service, currently heavily promoted by the firm was hit by a "technical fault" that appeared to throttle the network so that downstream speeds were dramatically reduced, although upstream remained constant.

A thread started by a user called 'Corking' on BT's forum outlined the issue that was occurring and that the firm had explained it was a network-wide issue.

"I have just got off the phone to BT and all Infinity users are currently getting just 2Mbit/s download speeds, although upload should not be affected," wrote the BT customer.

Another user claimed they were only getting a 700kbit/s download speed, but their upload was as high as 8Mbit/s.

BT apologised for the issue in a statement but seemed to suggest the issue had only affected a certain proportion of customers and said the issue was now resolved.

"The slow speed experienced by a number of customers was due to a technical fault that was highlighted through individual complaints and our customer forums, this has now been fixed," it said.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience and grateful to customers who highlighted this. We worked on this over the weekend to establish the cause and as of now it is fixed."

The embarrassing error comes at a time when BT is going head to head with Virgin Media to position itself as the nation's number one internet service provider (ISP) and when its rival is currently rolling out its own 100Mbit/s superfast service.