LONDON -British telecoms firm Virgin Media said on Tuesday there was an issue impacting its broadband services, after thousands of customers reported widespread problems with internet access and the group's website also appeared to be down.

There were more than 28,000 reports of Virgin Media outages on the Downdetector website as of Tuesday morning, beginning in the early hours, with most users reporting that their internet was not working.

"We're aware of an issue that is affecting broadband services for Virgin Media customers as well as our contact centres," Virgin Media said on Twitter.

"Our teams are currently working to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible and we apologise to those customers affected."

Virgin Media O2 is owned by Liberty Global and Spain's Telefonica.

  - Reuters