I know many of you in Askern have been without broadband for over 10 days now, and I wanted to give you an update on what’s happening.
I’ve been in touch with Openreach, who’ve explained that the problem started with rodent damage to cables. When their engineers went to fix it, they found a collapsed duct underground which meant they had to excavate and replace it.
The good news is that the duct has now been replaced, and Openreach tell me new cabling is being laid tomorrow. They’re expecting all services to be back up and running by Tuesday evening.
I know how frustrating this has been – especially for those of you working from home or running businesses. The lack of communication from Openreach hasn’t been good enough, and I’ve written to them to make that clear. I’ve also asked what they’re going to do to prevent widespread outages like this in future.
I’ll share details of their response when I receive it.
*UPDATE*
I have just now received the following update from Openreach: “I’m pleased to confirm that our engineers have been working diligently since the early hours, and the repairs have now been completed. Service has been fully restored, and batch testing across all affected customers shows no further issues.
If anyone continues to experience problems, these are likely isolated faults unrelated to the recent outage. In such cases, we recommend contacting their service provider, who can escalate individual issues to Openreach.
Please extend our sincere thanks to the affected residents for their understanding and cooperation during this work. Additionally, our local area managers are investigating pest control measures to reduce the likelihood of similar incidents occurring in the future.”