I worked for a hosting company back then (quite a major name in the U.K.) and we didnt have any outages. So I suspect the other guesses are right wrt jammed pho

I worked for a hosting company back then (quite a major name in the U.K.) and we didnt have any outages. So I suspect the other guesses are right wrt jammed phones lines, specific local ISP backhauls, and news sites being overloaded.