BT Openreach has reported its received double the normal level of damage reports from the public following continued severe weather.
As the Environment Agency continues to warn of flooding, BT’s network division says its expecting to suffer a record number of faults this week.
Customers in Cornwall, Cumbria, Swansea and areas in mid-Wales including Shrewsbury, on the other side of the border have lost broadband and phone services as a result of the extreme conditions.
Openreach has announced that network failure in these areas is beyond its control and expects that repairs will be delayed thanks to the high volume of repair jobs already in the pipeline.
An Openreach spokesperson said: “We are receiving more than double the level of damage reports from members of the public. It is important that we prioritise these calls as the issues being raised often represent a safety risk to members of the public and our engineers.
“Overall contact performance and especially provision contacts, has been extremely challenging over the last few weeks and is likely to remain very tough for at least a few more weeks.”
Other areas that continue to be affected by the weather include Belfast and Province, Crayford, Croydon, the Central, East and West Downs, Esher and North Wales.
Openreach engineers are working round the clock to get homes and businesses back online. The spokesperson added that extra resources are being directed to the worst affected areas while honouring existing commitments to connect new customers, where possible.
Last week Openreach announced that over 205,000 broadband and phone customers had been successfully reconnected following outages at the beginning of December.
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