As the nation held its collective breath...

... during Englands World Cup penalty shoot-out on Saturday evening, so did the BT national phone network.
Calls on the BT network during the quarter-final match against Portugal were down more than a third on what they would be at a normal Saturday tea-time.

But as the crunch game moved into extra time and then penalties something even more dramatic happened.
Colin Penney - duty manager at BTs national network management centre in Oswestry, which monitors traffic on the network said: Once the teams started taking their penalties, call traffic fell more than 80 per cent. It was around the same as we would expect to see at 12.30am.

With the final Portugal penalty and the end of Englands World Cup 2006 dreams there was a sudden surge in demand as the nation called friends and family to commiserate.

The figures for the previous England game against Ecuador were certainly marked but these were very dramatic, said Colin. Who knows what might have happened if England had got through to the semi-final and even the final? Well just have to wait another four years to find out.