Whatever happened to CityFibre?

Embarrassing for an infrastructure provider

Website Name: Cityfibre
URL Checked: cityfibre.com
Response Time: no response
Down For: more than a week
DOWN
Cityfibre.com is DOWN for everyone.
It is not just you. The server is not responding...

Or is my choice of 'is it down' checker wrong?

It's down for me too.

They've posted this today on Twitter:
"Our website is experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment. We're working on resolving them as soon as possible. In the meantime, we're here on Twitter for anything that you need!"

https://twitter.com/CityFibre/status/146633410755898...

Earlier Tweet...

we design carefully and quality check everything. It's about doing everything we can to get it right first time and ensure it keeps on working.

And following on their 'get it right first time', I just noticed this...

the cause of the fault was a fibre cable caught between the cover of the joint box and the joint frame.

https://www.facebook.com/BrawBand/posts/335719911696364

I'm only having a pop at CityFibre cos they've become less responsive than Openreach.

They don't host their website.

https://whois.domaintools.com/185.61.153.82

Unfortunate but they aren't a hosting provider or ISP so no surprise the site lives off their network.

In reply to a post by CarlTSpeak:

Unfortunate but they aren't a hosting provider or ISP so no surprise the site lives off their network.

Yes, I think I'd assumed that.

But - taking tongue out of cheek - they are a national critical infrastructure provider. You'd have thought they'd have a fail-safe website.

I'm not sure it matters. As long as their APIs are resilient and their actual network is of a quality you'd need for the role it has to perform, I can't care too much about their marketing site being available.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Yes, I think I'd assumed that.

But - taking tongue out of cheek - they are a national critical infrastructure provider. You'd have thought they'd have a fail-safe website.

Their customers can still order. That's the main thing.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

they are a national critical infrastructure provider. You'd have thought they'd have a fail-safe website.

Are they defined as a CNI ? I know the BT PLC owned networks probably are, and the motorway network is, but is Virgin Media? I would have put CityFibre in the same category as them.

Plenty of single points of failure in VM and TalkTalk networks, and in Sky and others, to call them CNI.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Are they defined as a CNI ?

I don't know to be honest. If not I'd have thought they aspire to be. Given how dependant we are becoming on the Internet, it's now a utility without which you cannot be part of society, I'm surprised Virgin and any major infrastructure provider aren't.
Sky not so much but then again you need a TV service to provide information.
Then again I thought BBC Radio 4 was part of the CNI. Look what happened this week. We were minutes away from launching the nukes.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Are they defined as a CNI ? I know the BT PLC owned networks probably are, and the motorway network is, but is Virgin Media? I would have put CityFibre in the same category as them.

Plenty of single points of failure in VM and TalkTalk networks, and in Sky and others, to call them CNI.

I don't believe (happy to be corrected) that currently they are officially defined as a CNI - even though the management team there says things like:

“CityFibre is rapidly scaling as a national infrastructure platform of critical importance to the UK..."

Basically are they too big to fail right now? The answer has to be no.

jchamier

VM have just shown one of their failure points see BBC They have never claimed CNI to my knowledge.

Lucky for them TV service went off this morning rather than last night with the football. Then again much of that was streamed…on Amazon Prime.

Not that Marc Allera was particularly impressed.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

They have never claimed CNI to my knowledge.

Thanks, makes sense. At least the broadband kept working for us mandatory home workers