BRITISH Telecom (BT) apologised to National Lottery punters yesterday after a fault left hundreds of without a ticket for Saturday's jackpot draw.
The firm blamed a fault with a transmission terminal, in Middlesbrough, on Saturday afternoon for the fiasco.
The fault saw almost 300 lottery machines, in Hartlepool, Darlington, Middlesbrough and Stockton go off.
The problem took around three hours to fix, which BT said was well within its standards of service contract with lottery operators Camelot.
A spokesman for BT said: "The terminals were up and running again just after 7pm, so it wasn't recorded as a serious incident.
"However, the fact that it happened just before the rollover draw on Saturday means that it had quite an impact, and we apologise for any inconvenience or frustration it caused."
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