BT engineers have reported that broadband and phone customers in Guildford cut off by floods and storms have now all been reconnected.
Repair teams working for BT’s network division Openreach have had their work cut out for them since Christmas and New Years 2013, when the British Isles were blasted by unrelenting storms and gales that saw thousands of customers disconnected.
Despite the rising water levels causing chaos across the south west and other parts of central southern England, Openreach workers have yet to report of any major outages in other parts of the Thames Valley, Somerset or Devon.
Customers in Truro and parts of North Wales still remain disconnected, despite efforts to clear the biggest stack of repair jobs Openreach has seen since records began.
An Openreach spokesperson said: “In these outstanding cases we are continuing to direct available additional resource into the affected areas in order to bring the position back to normal as quickly as possible.”
It is currently unknown to what extent the extreme weather will affect Openreach’s ability to complete any superfast broadband rollout projects across flooded parts of the UK. The BDUK (Broadband Delivery for the UK) project was set up to help close the town and country broadband divide and get the majority of the UK (90 per cent) able to access superfast broadband by 2015.
Due to a variety of reasons this initial deadline was extended to 2017 and then to 2018, with new coverage goals of 95 and 98 per cent added. For reasons beyond anybody’s control, completion of certain broadband projects could be set back again, depending on the damage done.
Image: Kai Hendry/Flickr
Leave a Reply