Copper Cable Thieves Knock Out Broadband Near St Neots for a Third Time

A criminal gang has, for a third time since the start of last year (see here and here), this week disrupted Openreach’s broadband services around part of the Cambridgeshire (England) town of St Neots by stealing 500 metres worth of the UK network operator’s local copper telecoms cables.

The reports from local community groups, seen by ISPreview, confirm that the problem occurred at the start of this week, possibly on the same section of the A428 road as before (the original incident occurred on a bridge to the south of the town and this one seems to be nearby, but a little further on). Some customers in the nearby village of Wyboston also claim to have been impacted.

Openreach has informed us that the offenders were first on the scene from Monday 3rd August, but tripped an alarm and the incident was reported. However, they appear to have returned to the location on the 4th (we assume late at night), where they remained into the morning of the 5th, when the cables were removed and Openreach’s network damaged.

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. Such criminals have no regard for the disruption they cause, which in this case has resulted in a protracted service outage impacting “hundreds of customers“. Disruption like this can be particularly serious for some vulnerable individuals (e.g. telecare users). But all of this is to say nothing of the high costs involved with repairing such damage.

A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:

“We’re extremely disappointed that residents and businesses in St Neots have once again been affected by criminals stealing copper and fibre cables from our network.

Around 500 metres of cable was stolen, affecting services for hundreds of customers. Incidents like this can leave people unable to get online, make calls or access vital services, while also putting vulnerable people at greater risk.

Our engineers are working as quickly and safely as possible to repair the damage and restore service, but thefts on this scale require extensive reconstruction work and repairs are likely to take several days.

We urge anyone who sees suspicious activity around telecoms infrastructure to report it to police by calling 101, or 999 if a crime is taking place.”

Earlier this year the network operator revealed that, since April 2024, more than 100,000 people across the UK have temporarily lost the use of their landline and/or broadband due to copper theft with 153km of cable stolen in that time (April 2024 to April 2026) – spanning almost the same distance as from London to Bristol.

However, the criminals are also coming under pressure from a rise in the number of arrests (examples here and here), which are often followed by some convictions (example). 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.

Openreach has also recently partnered with EMR, a global leader in metal recycling, to help combat copper telecoms cable theft, not least through the deployment of new signage across all UK sites and reinforcing their policy to refuse any material suspected of being stolen (here).

As we’ve said before, the ongoing deployment of Full Fibre (FTTP) broadband lines should, eventually, resolve the core problem as optical fibre has no value to thieves. But this won’t happen 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 still confuse the two. Completely removing core copper cables will take a fair 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.