Virgin Media and Openreach Fail Property Owner Over Cable Damage and Repair

Five tenants of a building in Gloucester (Gloucestershire, England) could be left without a working UK broadband and phone service after the property owner, Mo Mujaed, claimed that Openreach had deployed a new telecoms (telegraph) pole that damaged a seemingly exposed Virgin Media cable in the process, which served the building.

According to Mr Mujaed, Openreach’s civil engineering contractor, Quinns, arrived earlier in the month and “installed a new pole directly through one of my property’s Virgin Media cables, cutting the connection in the process.” As a result, the building’s five tenants, as well as its CCTV/security system, have been offline since 14th August 2026.

As if to make matters worse, Virgin Media then sent out an engineer who identified the physically cut cable, but failed to restore the connection. Despite this, Virgin Media later contacted Mr Mujaed to say that the “issue has been fixed,” when in fact it had not and the tenants were still offline.

A complaint was then raised with Virgin Media over the protracted service loss and conflicting communications, which the operator responded to, albeit only to confirm the situation and say that a technician had been booked to attend again on.. 14th September 2026 (a month after the incident started!). But it sounds like Virgin may possibly attempt to speed that up.

Extract from Virgin Media’s Complaint Response

You reported a cable damage issue requiring outside property work, initially reported on 13 August. A technician visit promised for 24 August did not occur, and a resolution email was sent without the work being completed. You expressed frustration over conflicting promises from multiple agents regarding technician availability. You requested immediate engineer attendance and mentioned escalating via email and social media. The agent apologized, confirmed a technician appointment for 14 September, and committed to escalating the issue to the area field support team to attempt rescheduling for an earlier date.

The same email also saw Virgin Media claim to have tried but failed to contact the customer over their complaint, but Mr Mujaed strongly disputes this as “100% not true“; he claims not to have received any calls and asked Virgin Media to prove they made such attempts.

At this point ISPreview got involved and queried the incident with both sides. First to respond was Openreach, which informed us that they were still investigating whether or not the pole’s installation was the cause of the problem (it seems hard to dispute that it was, as the issue began during their deployment), before apologising for any disruption.

The national operator also pointed out that there was an “exposed cable” present (sadly something we’ve seen before with a few of Virgin’s installs) and added that it would ultimately be down to Virgin Media to fix.

A spokesperson for Openreach told ISPreview:

“We’re sorry to hear about the disruption at this property. Our records show there was already an exposed cable at this location.

At the moment, we haven’t seen any evidence that confirms how the damage happened but we’ll look into this further with our supplier to understand whether any damage may have occurred during our work and to check that the correct digging procedures were followed.

As the cable belongs to Virgin Media, we’re unable to repair it ourselves. The property owner should contact Virgin Media directly so they can arrange a repair.

Any discussions about costs or liability would need to take place through the relevant providers’ established processes.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience this has caused. We’ll support any investigation where appropriate and will help establish the facts as quickly as possible.”

As for Virgin Media, they initially informed ISPreview on Wednesday last week that they hoped to get the property reconnected the same day, but were concerned that further construction works requiring a permit may be needed and that could take longer. Virgin’s local area manager similarly indicated to Mr Mujaed that their duct had been damaged and it may take 2-3 weeks to fully repair. At the last update on Friday, before the bank holiday weekend, the service was still awaiting repair.

A Virgin Media spokesperson told ISPreview:

“The cable connecting Mr Mujaed’s property has unfortunately been badly damaged by works carried out by a third party, unrelated to Virgin Media. We sent an engineer to site this morning [Wednesday], with repair works scheduled to begin this afternoon, and we’ll restore Mr Mujaed’s services as quickly as possible.”

Quite why Openreach deployed their pole so close to Virgin Media’s cable is currently unclear and the fact that the cable was so exposed, ironically, also made it rather difficult for an engineer to say it was overlooked. Nevertheless, accidents while deploying new telecoms infrastructure do sometimes happen and in those cases often what matters most is how the relevant companies respond and resolve the issue.

Sadly, on this occasion, Mr Mujaed and his tenants appear to have been badly let down by both network operators, which left them to suffer the consequences through a protracted service loss that currently looks set to last a fair bit longer.