TalkTalk has restored its service following an outage that affected many of its landline customers who said they couldn't hear a dial tone, let alone make or receive phone calls.
Some of the customers said they had been experiencing problems for most of this week, although the majority of complaints flooded in yesterday morning.
Many of the company's customers took to Twitter to complain of the bad service, with one angry grandchild saying her nan was unable to communicate without the use of her landline: "@TalkTalk_UK really hacked off with the service this morning my nan has no landline and ur service is as much use as a chocolate teapot," while another drew attention to the fact they had not been able to use their landline for almost a week: "@TalkTalk_UK @TalkTalkCare @TalkTalkTVStore your service is appalling. Problem with my landline since Monday and still not fixed #pathetic."
The company first said: "We're experiencing problems with no dial tones on some landlines. If you're affected by this, you may still be able to make or receive calls," in a statement and then updated this with an apology.
"We are sorry that some customers are experiencing problems with their landlines. Some affected customers may still be able to make or receive calls even though they cannot hear a dial tone. We're working hard to fix this issue as quickly as possible," the company added.
When further questioned about the outage, TalkTalk said services should be restored by 2PM, although many customers said they weren't able to use their phones until later than this.
However, the status page on TalkTalk's website that normally notifies customers about their service went down shortly after the service was due to be restored, meaning they were unable to check whether their landline was back up and running.
Earlier this week, EE and O2 customers reported problems calling landlines from their mobile phone lines. At first, the 11 January hiccup was thought to be a problem caused by BT, although the telecommunications provider said it was unable to find a fault on its side.
