Pipex' data centre in London was floored by a power failure yesterday, leaving tens of thousands of customers in the dark.

The electrical fault happened at about 10.00am yesterday morning at Pipex's Harbour Exchange data centre in the Docklands area of London.

The broadband ISP is unable to say exactly how many web-hosting customers were hit yesterday, but accepted that it would be in the region of "tens of thousands" adding that the incident was "significant".

In a statement, the firm said: "At 10am on Thursday, 19 January, there was a power fault on the distribution network that supplies Pipex's Harbour Exchange data centre in London.

"This caused a consequential fault on an internal UPS (uninterruptible power supply). The result was a loss of power to some areas of the data centre for less than 30 minutes. Pipex is awaiting a full incident report from the regional electricity company and the building landlord.

"While the majority of services were back online immediately, some required human intervention to restart. In addition to the on-site engineers, Pipex mobilised support in the south of England to aid a speedy recovery."

The ISP said yesterday's downtime was "uncharacteristic of Pipex's services".

Separately, Pipex announced yesterday that it had raised £14m to "fund further growth opportunities in the UK market". ®