Virgin Media customers were left without access to TV services after the company experienced a nationwide outage.

The problem that started around 1030 has prompted thousands of viewers to report issues

The company told customers that its engineers were working to fix the problem, which affected cities across the country, including London, Birmingham and Manchester.

In a recent update, the company said it has restored some channels.

The company said the problem was caused by “a major power outage”.

The Downdetector website that tracks outages has received more than 18,000 problem reports at one point.

Many users tweeted their annoyance at the loss of service and the way Virgin Media communicated: “Can you please update? No TV. Your status page is down. No information on phone lines”, he wrote a customer.

The company said it had identified the fault and that its engineers were working hard to fix the problem.

At 1:45 pm the company wrote: “We have now restored several channels with customers being able to watch BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, ITV + 1 and Channel 4. TV360 customers can also access the apps on their box”, the company wrote.

“We are working to restore all channels as quickly as possible and continue to work to resolve this issue this afternoon.”

But not everyone liked the partial return: “Channels 1 to 4 work, but the problem is that it’s not the year 1985 and we pay hundreds of channels”, a customer tweeted.

And some users have complained that the channels appeared and then disappeared.

The cause was revealed in a further company update at 3:30 pm: “We are attempting to restore more channels. While we do so, it could mean that customers temporarily lose access to previously restored channels.”

“We recognize this is frustrating for customers and again apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.”