UPDATE2 Major Cable Break Hits Broadband ISPs in South West England

A number of ISPs (e.g. Sky Broadband and Gigaclear) in big parts of South West England are currently being affected after a major (trunk) fibre optic cable was damaged in an unspecified incident, which has cut Internet and phone services around parts of Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

The incident itself began just after 9am yesterday morning (1st September) and is continuing to leave many people disconnected today. Major breaks like this do happen from time to time and they’re usually caused by accidents, such as third-party contractors ramming their diggers into an incorrect patch of ground.

The cable in question is used to supply capacity for a number of key networks and as a result the disruption is being felt far and wide.

Sky Status Update (10:11pm [1st Sept])

We understand from our on-site engineers that the problem has been caused by a fibre-cable break. Due to the complexities of the restorative works, it is likely to take some time to restore service. We’ll provide an update on progress in the morning. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Gigaclear Status Update (9pm [1st Sept])

We are aware of a major issue with our service. We have identified the issue as a failure of a major circuit in one of our network providers’ system, affecting many service providers not just Gigaclear. Engineers have identified the location of the issue, and anticipate restoration overnight or tomorrow morning, but we cannot predict exactly when. Gigaclear apologises for any inconvenience this has caused.

Unfortunately complex core network breaks are notorious for taking several hours and sometimes even days to resolve, which is partly because they often form part of a bigger cable cluster in multiple ducts.

Related networks usually have some redundancy and as a result the incident won’t be affecting 100% of connections within the given area, making its impact more sporadic. Never the less there are plenty of complaints floating around, although Sky did say last night that they were in the “final stages” of getting the problem resolved. We have yet to see another update.

Just to give you some idea of how messy this can become, here’s what a similar cable break looked like when it occurred last month.

UPDATE 8:40am

Sky has just tweeted that “all customers should now be able to call and go online” again and Gigaclear did the same, although this was followed by another rather different message from Sky.

UPDATE 10:26am

Sky may have spoken too soon, with both the ISP and some of its customers acknowledging that connectivity in parts of the same area has once again fallen off-line. Meanwhile the Service Status page claims that there are no problems.