Virgin Media forced to apologise as tens of thousands left without ...

Virgin Media has apologised twice after broadband outages affected tens of thousands of customers.

Customers initially experienced outages from 2am on Tuesday, which the firm said was resolved by 11.30am.

Disruption was reported once again at 4pm by Downdetector - an online platform that provides users with real-time information about the status of their broadband services.

In a statement at 5.25pm, Virgin Media said: "Unfortunately we have seen a repeat of an earlier issue which is causing intermittent broadband connectivity problems for some Virgin Media customers.

"We apologise again to those impacted, our teams are continuing to work flat out to find the root cause of the problem and fix it."

Internet disruption was reported by 55,000 individuals by 5pm on Tuesday, one fifth of whom reported they were suffering from a total blackout.

Some aggravated customers have now asked for a refund, as disrupted services are being followed by a hike in price for their services.

One customer Twitter user, Sean Brody, wrote: "What are you doing to give customers a refund for the last two days?

"I'm fed up of paying for a service I constantly do not receive. Time to shop around I think. Especially as you're putting your charges up 50% next month! #robbery."

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Aidan Minter added: "Even your service has objections to your ridiculous price hike."

Earlier on Tuesday, Virgin Media said its team was working to identify and fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Sky News has contacted Virgin Media for comment.