8:00 AM -- Don't Tier 1 operators have sophisticated disaster recovery plans in place these days? It seems not.

An electrical fault that caused a flood and a fire at a BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) local exchange in Paddington, West London, on Wednesday, March 31, left tens of thousands of people without voice or broadband connections.

OK, these things happen. What's shocking, though, is that normal service is not due to be resumed until Tuesday, April 6.

See this BBC report for more details.

At a time when BT is facing intense competition from the likes of cable operator Virgin Media Inc. (Nasdaq: VMED) and TalkTalk Telecom, and trying to promote itself as the premier provider of broadband-based service packages, such a lengthy outage runs counter to BT's marketing message, and in a very high-profile way, as the problems have been widely reported in the UK national press, on TV, and on the radio.

For major carriers such as BT, it's a disaster when there's no sign of recovery.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading