What to do when your broadband goes down

Home › Guides › What to do when your broadband goes down

Last updated 18 July 2026

Broadband dropping out is one of those problems that goes from mildly annoying to genuinely costly the longer it lasts, especially if you work from home. The good news is that most outages have a simple cause, and there is a clear order to work through. Here is what to check, how to tell whether it is your fault or the provider's, what you are owed if it drags on, and how to stay online in the meantime.

First, the quick fixes

Run through these in order. They resolve the large majority of dropouts in a couple of minutes.

1. Restart the router properly. Turn it off at the wall, wait 30 seconds, then turn it back on and give it two to three minutes to reconnect. This alone fixes a surprising number of faults.
2. Check the router lights. A red or off broadband light usually points to a line fault. A normal broadband light but no internet points to a provider or account issue.
3. Check your cables. Make sure the cable from the wall socket and the power lead are firmly in. If you have a phone-line filter, try reseating it.
4. Try a wired connection. Plug a laptop straight into the router with an ethernet cable. If that works, your problem is WiFi, not the line, so move closer to the router or restart your device.
5. Check for an area outage. Look at your provider's service status page, or an independent outage tracker, from your phone's mobile data. If others in your area are down, it is the network, not you.
6. Check your account. A missed payment can suspend service. A quick look at your online account rules it out.

Is it you, or is it an outage?

This is the question that decides what you do next. If your provider's status page or an outage tracker shows a fault in your area, there is nothing to fix at your end and you simply wait, though you may be owed money if it runs long. If everything points to your own line or equipment and a restart has not fixed it, report the fault to your provider. Reporting matters, because it starts the clock that any compensation is measured against.

If it stays down, you may be owed money

Most large UK providers have signed up to Ofcom's automatic compensation scheme. For a total loss of service that is not fixed within two full working days of you reporting it, the rate from 1 April 2026 is £10.34 for every day it remains down after that deadline. It should be credited to your bill within about 30 days, and you should not have to claim. The key action on your part is to report the fault promptly, because the two working days are counted from that report. If a credit does not appear, chase it.

How to stay online while it is fixed

For a short fault, tethering off your phone covers the essentials for an hour or two, though it will not run a household or a video-call-heavy work day for long. For anything longer, or if being offline actually costs you money, a rented 5G router is the clean answer: it puts everyone back online on its own connection, with unlimited data, and you keep it only until your broadband returns. Some people who work from home keep one on standby precisely so an outage never means a lost day.

The bottom line

Most broadband dropouts are fixed with a restart and a cable check, and a quick look at a status page tells you whether it is you or the network. If it is a genuine outage that drags past two working days, you are likely owed £10.34 a day, so report it to start the clock. And if being offline is not an option, have a way to get back online the same day rather than waiting on the repair.