It's a shame that these businesses that have so much hinging on their Internet connections don't have any kind of backup line arranged.
Edit: you could also consider a backup line from an LLU provider. You still have the copper as a single point of failure, and perhaps power at the exchange, but the infrastructure is different.
While BT runs over telephone wires. Therefore is more pervasive in the UK.
So Roy works at BT now!
When I spoke to a support guy yesterday he said that 30% of their network was out and this was 4 hours into the outage.
Edit @ 13:50, back up, but so slow it's making doing anything impossible, still routing through DR site