More than 20,000 UK homes were affected by a phone exchange fault tonight.

BT said customers in northern England and part of Scotland were experiencing disruption to their broadband service following a power cut.

Engineers were working to resolve the problem that hit an exchange covering the Edinburgh and Tynecastle area.

A BT spokesman said: ''There's an issue with a node in Edinburgh and we've sent our engineers to deal with it.

''It's affecting a significant part of the UK.

''We've diverted engineers to Edinburgh to fix it as quickly as we can.''