Pop Idol left BT close to collapse

The Pop Idol voting marathon brought the BT telephone network close to collapse, it emerged today.

At least 80 million call attempts were made within two hours on Saturday evening as viewers struggled to register a preference for Will Young or Gareth Gates.

BT's telephone voting system, which is limited to 28,000 lines, was unable to cope and staff implemented a system called "call-gapping". This prevents calls from going beyond the customer's local exchange to protect the network.

Despite this, 30 areas of the country suffered temporary failure of the system, blocking out all but 999 calls. BT officials admitted this was "almost certainly" due to the Pop Idol frenzy.

The deluge was equivalent to three-quarters of all calls normally made over 24 hours. BT's specialist telephone voting company, Telescope, along with programme makers Thames Television, had wanted more voting lines to ensure callers were not disappointed. BT, however, said its "state of the art" system had a maximum of 28,000 lines.

But BT and ITV said the result was not affected.

Will, 23, beat 17-year-old bookies' favourite Gareth by 500,000 votes. Fans who were unable to get through said their vote could have changed the result, but a Pop Idol spokesman said it was "insulting to Will to suggest his win was for any other reason than public choice".

Telescope said: "We would hope the response makes the case for greater capacity and more phone vote lines."