UPD Sudbury Locals Left Without Broadband and Phone from BT for 2 Weeks

Residents and businesses on and around Melford Road in the small market town of Sudbury (Suffolk, England) have been left without broadband and phone services since 4th February 2014 when a car hit a local BT telegraph pole and damaged its cables.

Initially some 1,300 homes also suffered a loss of power and the road was closed for 6 hours in order to allow for vital repair work. But an unknown number of premises in the immediate area have continued to remain without access to the Internet or a working phone service for over two weeks.

Meanwhile locals complain that BTOpenreach, which is responsible for maintaining the local telecoms infrastructure, has been giving them the run-around.

Sylvia Dales, Owner of a Local Pottery Business, said:

“We are invisible as far as they are concerned. They keep telling us one thing which is then contradicted. You never get to speak to the same person twice. The latest I have been told is that it will be fixed on February 28, but that is ages away. We just can’t understand why it would take so long.

BT keeps giving us false information. It seems impossible to get any true information, and it’s so frustrating. It’s affecting all of our lives in different ways.”

Unfortunately the summary on Suffolk Free Press doesn’t include an official comment from BT and so we’ve shot off a request in order to get their side of the story and a reason for why it’s taking so long to repair the cables, which should in theory be easier if they’re over-ground.

At least it’s not as bad as the plight of 10 homes in a rural Fife (Scotland) village, near St Michaels Inn, where another BT fault left locals without a working broadband and phone service for over two months (here).

Unfortunately lengthy outages, especially in rural areas, are a lot more common during periods where Openreach’s resources are being stretched, such as that which has been caused by the recent flooding.

UPDATE 25th Feb 2014

BTOpenreach has furnished us with a statement in which they apologise to locals for the problems.

An Openreach Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We’re sorry that it’s taking longer than usual to reconnect these properties. Unfortunately we are dealing with a large volume of faults in the area as a result of the recent extremely bad weather and we are doing all we can to carry out repairs as quickly as possible. However, some repairs can be complex, time consuming and involve the replacement of substantial sections of underground or overhead cabling.

Openreach needs to install 50 metres of new cabling to reconnect these customers whilst traffic management is also required in order to start this work. The good news is that this is now in place and our engineers are working to restore services to those affected as soon as possible.”