Fibre Eating Mice Delay First 1Gbps B4RN Broadband Links in Arkholme

The Broadband For the Rural North (B4RN) scheme, which is attempting to deploy a new community funded and built fibre optic broadband (FTTH) network in parts of rural Lancashire (England, UK), faced an unexpected delay over Christmas after rodents nibbled their way through one of the operators fibre ducts.

The project achieved a significant milestone last year after it began connecting its first homes in Quernmore to the new network. Residents of Arkholme were set to be next in line, with the first connections due to go live before Christmas, but all did not go quite according to plan.

Unfortunately B4RN’s testing revealed that there was a break in the fibre near to one of their access chambers. Closer inspection revealed that the damage had been caused by rodents, which apparently have quite the appetite for tasty fibre lines.

B4RNs Statement

“We soon realised that this was in fact a fantastic lesson for us, and has saved us many thousands of pounds as this won’t be replicated elsewhere. (We will make sure of that) .We also realised that no customers were on this link, so we didn’t have to deal with hundreds of people wondering why their connection had stopped working, we had a breathing space to find the problem and fix it before anyone was inconvenienced. We also had to find a way to stop it ever happening to us again. We soon bucked up and got cracking.”

All’s well that ends well and B4RN was able to solve the problem by adding a little armour to its fibre links. A video of the situation can be found below.

Contrary to some conspiracy theories we do not believe that the mice were sent in by B4RN’s rival, BT 🙂 .