Major Broadband Outage in Liverpool After Contractor Cuts Key Cables UPDATE2
Broadband and Ethernet customers across northern parts of Liverpool (Merseyside) – primarily the L31 (Maghull) and surrounding areas – in England are today suffering connectivity problems after a third-party contractor dug through a large underground cable right next to the local BT Maghull exchange.
The situation appears to have started yesterday and is currently still ongoing. ISPreview contacted Openreach about the situation earlier this morning, but we have so far received no response. However, details sent to impacted communications providers do confirm a few things, such as that third-party contractors working for a utility company on a sewer excavation “damaged multiple fibre cables” near the exchange.
The resultant outage has hit both copper and fibre optic based broadband connections, as well as high-capacity Ethernet (leased line) services – the latter includes some circuits supporting Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). In total around 3,000 end customers are known to be impacted, but this is expected to rise as not everybody has reported in yet.
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Engineers currently appear to be swarming the area, although complex repairs like this, which involve damage across “multiple ducts” and an “unstable” excavation side (that will have to be made safe first), will take a lot of time. Some cables also “cannot be pulled through” and will need more extensive repair.
As a result of this it’s hard to know precisely when the situation will be fully resolved and a solid fix time (estimate) may not emerge until the weekend.
UPDATE 6th July 2026 @ 6:39am
We’ve finally managed to extract a response from Openreach. The message was received just after 10pm last night, which hopefully gives some context for that use of “today” below.
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An Openreach spokesperson told ISPreview:
“On Thursday, third party contractors carrying out culvert excavation work caused significant damage to our underground network near the Maghull telephone exchange, disrupting phone and broadband for some local homes and businesses.
Our engineers have been working around the clock to repair the damage, and we expect everyone to be restored by the end of today. Customers who continue to experience problems after this time should contact their service provider, as occasional residual faults can occur following complex repairs involving multiple cables.
We know how important it is for people to stay connected and we’re very sorry for the disruption this incident has caused.”
UPDATE 6th July 2026 @ 10:53am
Openreach has provided another update.
An Openreach spokesperson said:
“Our engineers worked around the clock to repair the damage and all affected customers should now be back in service. Occasionally residual faults can occur following complex repairs involving multiple cables, so anyone still experiencing any connectivity issues should contact their service provider to report a fault.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I’m in this and am affected by this. Started at about 1.45pm yesterday, when I reported the outage to BT, so just passed the 24hr point now.
As mentioned was around 1:30 yesterday.
Walked past earlier and the OpenReach team were pulling cable from the grid closest to the cut and setting up at the closest grid to the exchange.
Was around 11am, so hopefully fixed soon at 2pm at time of posting
Whoopsie.
Yep and the government and broadcasters want people to rely on this for TV. Imaging if people lose the access to Eastenders for a few days, they will go crazy as this sort of thing will happen more.
TBF though TV transmitters can fail too. Bilsdale transmitter went up in flames in 2021 & people in North Yorkshire & Cleveland were without TV for weeks.
That’s going to be an expensive charge back to the contractors who inadvertently cut the cables, (presumably this will be covered by insurance)
I’m impacted and many more than 3k suggested here. Most of Maghull and surrounding area is impacted.
I bet someone will be waterboarded for this.
Happy Friday.
Thankfully Skelmersdale is still connected.
Every broadband customer should be in their right to seek compensation, which Openreach etc should then pass onto the water company, probably given to customers as a compensatory extension of their contacts. I doubt it will happen that way, but that’s what should happen.
What SLA did you contractually agree to and what are the remedies for not meeting it?
How are you calculating your damages?
Right, you “are not getting what you are paying for” – a best effort up to speed service with no SLA or even guarantee.
Go get a leased line – then you can ring up, whinge, be the first to be re connected and possibly claim back if your SLA is financially backed.
Or just stop moaning?
I got laughed at for this, but I have a starlink on my roof just in case we have an outage. it’s not needed to be on all month so the max I will ever pay is £40 – but it also can’t be cut by a JCB. It would take all 11k sats to go down before there was an outage (or a big storn, but only crazy people run a 12Ghz transmitter/receiver in a storm)
So as the others have said – good luck with that!
More to the point since when did Openreach do Water? Are you still hung over?
About the best you can hope for is money off the bill for the time the service is unavailable.
Service Level Credits are unheard of with broadband agreements – and really only exist in very much more expensive and complex bespoke commercial agreements.
Mom and pop won’t see compo for consequential loss due to loss of broadband and the inability to stream Love Island for a a day or two…
There is a compensation scheme that should get paid to all customers automatically. It only kicks in after 2 days, but it is there.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/service-quality/automatic-compensation-need-know
Unless a specific exception applies, the scheme requires signatories to pay automatic compensation to customers when the problem is caused by an event beyond a customer’s, or the provider’s control. Examples include extreme weather, strikes and third-party acts.
If only there was some national infrastructure database detailing where cable were routed……….
#NUAR #LSBUD
That certainly helps, but ultimately its down to the guy or girl behind the levers and all it takes is a moment of inattention…underground assets will always be at risk of some sort of damage whether its digger teeth or rodents teeth…
This is why I say BIG NO to Freeview TV online streaming from the government threatening to turn off Aerial. Keep the Freeview transmitter FOREVER!
TBF TV transmitters fail too as in the case of Bilsdale (above) and many more people lost TV then and for longer.
Nah. Expensive. Need the spectrum for other things. Hugely lower use of linear TV now. Get a backup or use phone.
Without IPTV what happens if you’ve a power cut? You have a Freeview TV that doesn’t need mains power, or a UPS that can keep it going for any length of time?
When Emley Moor transmitter mast collapsed in 1969, several million people were left without TV services.
@Polish Poler
what if your local cell mast also depends on the local exchange?
if there’s a power cut in my village, not only do we lose OFNL, but all the cell masts on the nearby water tower go down too.
Dare I suggest that broadband access is possibly more important to many (working from home…or just working from the office/factory/warehouse/wherever) than watching daytime television over the internet!!
In any event, if its so very important to you then, as they saying goes, god helps those who help themselves -> have a non-terrestrial backup means of internet connection and quit moaning about diggers through cables. That’s life people.
I once bgot screamed at because a guy was losing hundreds of pounds an hour on his business dealings, and he was on a £4.50 a month ADSL line.
I hung up on him. (this was back in 2005)
It’s still down in maghull I’m not trying to watch love island I’m trying to work from home. The latest update says 6pm tomorrow (Sunday) it’s been down since 2pm Thursday . It’s not x huge issue it’s just crazy how much we rely on WiFi!
And not everyone is moaning they are just trying to find out when it’s back up smart arse. Get a life
@simon
Well, Starlink are currently charging a total of £50 per month on the cheapest plan (£40 + £10 kit fee)
If you suspend your plan (assuming that’s possible at the moment in the UK) then the current monthly fee during suspension appears to be £9.
I guess you would still need to pay the £10 kit rental as well. £19pm seems a lot extra (for most people) to pay just in case your broadband goes off so completely every few years that you can’t even connect with 4g/5g.
And, of course, a very rich lunatic owns it.
With an outage as big as this one, and with the huge resources that Openreach can bring to bear, it’s doubtful this problem could have been fixed any quicker. Particularly under the media and political spotlight.
Stuff happens and hopefully lessons will be learned that reduce the chances of such a big outage happening in future.
The internet has slowly become more important to us over time but a smaller proportion of us rely on it so completely they can’t do without it for a couple of days. These people *should* have a back up plan in place.
I suspect everyone else will have to cope as best they can as they do when other personal, local and world events affect their lives.