Faulty Power Cables Damage Openreach Network in Malvern
An unspecified number of homes and businesses in the Worcestershire (England) town of Malvern have been hit by major disruption to their broadband ISP and phone connectivity, which has lasted for several days, after five of Openreach’s local cables were damaged. This has required extensive engineering work to fully repair.
According to the Malvern Observer, five underground cables in St Andrews Road sustained “quite a lot of damage” in the incident (see picture – top), which took place on Wednesday (5th July 2023). Openreach has since confirmed to us that this was caused by a “faulty underground power cable“. Engineers have been working flat out since to repair the damaged section.
A spokesperson for Openreach said: “We understand that being without broadband is hugely disruptive for everyday life, and would like to reassure local people that we’re doing all we can to reconnect them as quickly as possible.” The network operator has since informed us that the majority of the work is now done, with most people being reconnected. But a few bits are left to finish off, and this may extend the work a bit into the weekend.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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when issues like this occur, BT (as an ISP) should really be in a position to offer their own customers (at least) EE enabled 4G backups
They already do, for customers on the premium priced Halo packages. But even that offers no guarantee you’ll have a good enough signal to make a reliable data connection at home.
the “hybrid connect” does at least give you a better chance of that, since it’s a separate box to the smart hub and can be placed anywhere within wifi range of the hub (it can also be wired, of course).
i.e. you might stick it upstairs and on a side of the house that gets good reception. it also has external antenna connections if you’re very serious about it.
My understanding was that you don’t even need to be on a Halo package.
They’ll send one out to you if it appears the outage is going to be a while (to avoid compensation)… you just need to ask.