We are getting sporadic reports in GWR IT from people whos 'always on' generally connects fine, but randomly drops for no reason and it can be several hours before the connection will restablish.

After many hours of troublshooting with no postive outcome we have spoken to BT (as a sample provider) and had the following response

I know this is a difficult time for everyone and with people across the country working from home broadband has never been so important, if you are having issues with your broadband try your best to make use of the BT wifi hotspots that are free for all BT customers and make use of the BT App and website to report faults (if you have 3g and 4g) please try to do all you can before calling BT so that the phones are as free as possible for the most vulnerable customers, if you need extra help I will check this post twice a day and reply to as many comments as possible, keep safe everyone we will get through these tough times

BT have then gone on to release a hotspot map which highlights areas with most the most problems, and almost all the GWR areas are affected with London, Bristol and Weston Super Mare amongst those areas hardest hit.

Internet connections are throttled based on usage gaming traffic, streaming traffic, VPN traffic and so on. Each of these has limits hence why your internet can be fine, but your VPN will not connect.

GWR have lifted mobile data restrictions during this time, so if your VPN will not connect on your home internet, please try your phone hotspot.