Vandals

[Doublell]

During the past 2/3 weeks there have been two occasions when I've lost connection to the internet. Each time I spent 30 minutes on the phone with Pipex, trying various solutions, before being told there was a fault at my local telephone exchange. When it happened again this week I determined to visit the exchange, which is less than a mile away as the crow flies, to find out what was going on. On the way I can across a number of BT vans parked along the road and decided to ask the engineers what the problem was. I was told that vandals had damaged underground copper cables in a number of places and about 100 yards of cable might have to be replaced. Apparently some 300-400 telephone lines were affected. Losing internet connection is frustrating but more serious is that a large number of people were unable to telephone the emergency services.

[rayinski]

Hi,

they might be after the copper itself as it's worth a lot of money atm see link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8333774.stm)

As to not bieng able to contact the emergency services, that's very worrying and to that end i always make sure my mobile is fully charged...just in case.

ray

[wildthing666]

So BT replace the copper wire and the vandals come and nick it again one good reason for BT to change to fibre to the home and remove the copper

[Mouse]

This kind of happened to me three years ago when I moved into my current address. However it wasn't kids it was road workers on the main road.

They cut through the cabling. It left us without internet and landline access for roughly 6-8 weeks, if not longer.

BT cocked up large style in terms of sorting out the gaffe and cost them a small fortune in costs from the neighbours and me.

When the engineer carried out the repair, he stated that it should have took the same day the fault was reported. I think it was about a 10-20 min job for him to sort out the cables.