To be fair to Tiscali, I've been getting frequent emailed updates from my ISP (even though my own connection has not been affected) about the problems with BT lines in the Ilford exchange area.
For example, this is part of what was sent at 0752 on 5th April:
"Claranet have identified an incident impacting the following services; Leased Lines, Ethernet Lines and xDSL. The fault is located deep in a tunnel, deep level structural damage and high CO2 levels mean that BT will be unable to resolve this incident by repairing the existing infrastructure. Mobile units currently on route to the site and will be used to set up temporary connectivity bypassing the affected tunnel span. It is estimated that all necessary equipment should have arrived on site, been configured and a work-around put in place for all affected services by 5pm this evening. Due to the scale of this incident BT are unable to re-route any individual circuits as they do not have the capacity elsewhere to be able to cope with this".
Subsequent emails (which arrived at the rate of one or two a day since then) have showed that BT have been experiencing extremely serious problems with finding a safe way to fix the fault.
Chris