“Not again” – Broken Cable Joint Knocks Out BT Phone Lines in Binfield Heath

BTOpenreach has once again had to apologise to residents of Binfield Heath in south Oxfordshire (England) after local homes were left for almost one week without access to a working copper telephone service, following yet another broken cable joint. The problem came shortly after an epic 6 week outage (here) over the Christmas and New Year period.

Unfortunately the village has been plagued by similar problems for the past few years, which recently resulted in the Managing Director (Service Management) of Openreach, Warren Buckley, promising to learn the lessons of how it handled Binfield Heath in order to improve their response.

Sadly the issues now appear to have continued, which is despite locals clubbing together in order to raise £60,000 for a new superfast broadband (FTTC) service to be rolled out (here).

A Spokesperson for Openreach said:

“Service has been affected in the Binfield Heath area due to a broken cable joint. Openreach engineers are replacing 15 metres of underground cable and working on a repair as quickly as possible.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused to those people affected. Barring any unforeseen difficulties, it is estimated that the service will be restored by the end of the week.”

Suffice to say that locals were clearly not feeling in a terribly sympathetic mood about the whole situation, which according to the Henley Standard was greeted with sighs of “not again” by the local parish councillor Roger Roberts.