2,500 Lincolnshire UK Premises Offline After Cable Thieves Strike Openreach

Some 2,500 properties around the village of Moulton Chapel in Lincolnshire (England) are suffering “significant disruption” to their broadband and phone connectivity, which occurred after criminals cut and then stole an unspecified amount of Openreach’s copper telecoms cable in the area.

According to the Lincolnshire Police, the incident appears to have occurred along Roman Road at about 8:50am in the morning on Monday (19th Jan 2026), which is an unusually busy time of day for a gang to strike such infrastructure; it’s almost always a gang as it usually takes more than one person to successfully rip such heavy cable out of the ground, before police can respond.

At present it’s not known when the service will be fully reconnected, which isn’t surprising as metal theft crimes like this often cause extensive damage and may require a fair bit of civil engineering to resolve. The BBC News has some feedback from locals in the area.

We should point out that it’s not uncommon for criminal gangs to strike around the same area more than once, so this may not be the first or last such incident in the region. Such criminals have no regard for the disruption they cause, which for some vulnerable individuals (e.g. telecare users) could be particularly serious.

A spokesperson for Openreach said:

“We’re disappointed that residents in Moulton Chapel have borne the brunt of malicious damage and theft of cables from our phone and broadband network. This causes significant disruption to everyday lives and puts vulnerable people at risk.”

Crimes like this have become increasingly common in recent years, driven in part by the high price of copper and the rising cost of living. But the criminals are also coming under pressure from a rise in the number of UK-wide arrests (examples here and here), which are often followed by some convictions. Openreach also reported a 30% reduction in cable theft during 2023/24 after introducing a new forensic liquid marker (SelectaDNA) to help track and protect their network (here), although it doesn’t cover older cables that are already in the ground.

The ongoing deployment of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband lines should, eventually, help to reduce such thefts as fibre has no value to thieves. But this won’t completely stop the problem from occurring for a while because fibre and copper cables often share some of the same ducts (i.e. damaging one also damages the other), and thieves sometimes confuse the two. Completely removing core copper cables will take quite a few years.

Finally, Openreach has a partnership with Crimestoppers, which sometimes offers rewards for information given anonymously to the charity about cable thefts, if it leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible – you can contact them 100% anonymously on 0800 555 111 or use their anonymous online form. You can also contact Openreach’s security team direct or report via the local police (101). But if you see a crime in progress, please call the police on 999.