Network Rail Breaks Broadband for Uxbridge and West Drayton

Engineers working for Network Rail have damaged a mass of BTOpenreach’s cable ducts near Uxbridge (West London) because they “were not highlighted in the thorough surveys we carried out prior to the work.” As a result broadband and phone services in the area, including West Drayton, are suffering a major outage.

The incident occurred during the early hours of Wednesday morning (around 2am) and since then Openreach has had engineers on site to replace the ducting, but it’s a complicated job not least because the damage is extensive and occurred on a railway line.

A large number of ISPs have been affected and initially the problem was scheduled to be resolved yesterday, but sadly it’s still on-going.

A Spokesperson for Network Rail said:

“We are sorry that we have caused people problems with their phone and internet connections today. While work was taking place in the early hours of Wednesday morning we damaged cables which are used by a number of different communications providers.

The cables were not highlighted in the thorough surveys we carried out prior to the work. We are working to help BT’s Openreach division to get connections back up and running as soon as possible.”

A Spokesperson for Openreach added:

“We’re really sorry but we’ve got a problem at the moment in the West Drayton area, which means some of our customers will be having trouble getting online. We’re trying to fix the problem as quickly as we can.”

Apparently the damage itself occurred during electrification work on the local Elizabeth Line and the bad news is that the work may continue over the weekend. A statement posted on Sky Broadband’s support feed said, “Due to the safety risks and the complexity involved, repair work will carry on over the weekend. We’re sorry for the continued inconvenience caused by this outage.”