BT engineers reconnect the last few flooded homes hit by UK storms

BT engineers have announced that the last few homes and businesses to be taken offline by the floods and storms have been reconnected. 

The extreme weather which blasted the UK from late November until February this year saw thousands of people losing phone and broadband services. 

As well as the Environment Agency reporting record levels of rainfall, Openreach reported record numbers of faults on its network. 

In response to the biggest work stack ever seen, Openreach assembled teams of ‘hit squads’ to go door to door in the worst hit areas rather than assessing the damage remotely. 

The result is that BT’s network arm has now been able to reconnect the last few homes and firms in north Wales – exactly a month to the day that Openreach announced its proactive approach. 

An Openreach spokesperson said: “Following the severe storm conditions and flooding that hit the UK, Openreach declared MBORC [Measures Beyond our Reasonable Control] for repair activities, in a number of areas. We have been working hard to restore service and have already removed MBORC for repair activities from most areas. 

“We can now remove MBORC for repair activities from the last remaining area, with effect from 23:59 Thursday 20 March 2014.” 

MBORC is a bit of Openreach jargon that refers to any event outside of its control that disrupts customer’s services, whether that’s extreme weather, theft of copper cables or Glaswegian arson.