Cable Munching Rats Cause 11 Day Openreach Broadband Outage in Doncaster

Nearly 100 premises in Askern, which is a town and civil parish within the City of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, England), have been left without access to Openreach’s UK broadband network after rodents – those with a seemingly strong appetite for telecoms infrastructure – chewed through one of the operator’s cables in the area. Nothing like a diet high in fibre.

Over the years we’ve seen plenty of animal and insect related damage occurring on UK broadband networks, from swarms of Bees or Wasps occupying street cabinets (here), to Badgers blocking access to cable ducts, and spiders decorating the inside of connection boxes with a carpet of webs – a fairly common occurrence (here). Nature certainly has an endless box of surprises for engineers to “enjoy“.

One of the most common problems that engineers often have to face is when hungry Rodents chew through vital optical fibre and copper cables (here), which also appears to be something that recently occurred in the town of Askern. Rats will chew through almost anything, even concrete and live power cables (Rats haven’t heard of the Darwin award), so absolute prevention can be a challenge. Just a shame someone had to rat them out (sorry).

According to the Labour MP for Doncaster North, Ed Miliband, the engineers that Openreach dispatched to fix the cable also discovered that there was a collapsed underground duct, which is why the repairs have taken longer than usual. “The good news is that the duct has now been replaced, and Openreach tell me new cabling is being laid tomorrow [2nd Dec]. They’re expecting all services to be back up and running by Tuesday evening,” said the MP to the Doncaster Free Press.

A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:

“Part of our underground network was damaged by rodents, affecting service for around 93 properties. While investigating, engineers also found the duct requires repairs. We’re working as quickly as possible, and restoration works are due to take place tomorrow (Tuesday).”

Ed Miliband also asked Openreach “what they’re going to do to prevent widespread outages like this in future“, although it’s not known how they responded. One answer is perhaps to try and stop the rats getting into ducts in the first place, but such things are often easier said than done across a national network that covers over 30 million premises, where rivals often share the same infrastructure. As above, rats are notoriously difficult vermin to stop, and in this case the duct had also collapsed.