{"id":159243,"date":"2025-09-25T09:22:23","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/159243\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T09:22:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T09:22:23","slug":"family-at-wits-end-over-extended-broadband-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/159243\/","title":{"rendered":"Family at ‘wits’ end’ over extended broadband outage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Beech, East Midlands<\/p>\n

\"SteveSteve Beech\/BBC<\/p>\n

Matt Rains said his children’s education suffered because of the outage<\/p>\n

A family from Derby have said they are at their wits’ end after being left without broadband or a landline for more than eight weeks.<\/p>\n

Matt Rains said the service at his home on Westbourne Park in Mackworth was cut in July, which is thought to be down to the severing of a cable connecting two telegraph poles.<\/p>\n

The 49-year-old said he had been in repeated contact with his internet provider Sky and also with Openreach, which operates the network, but still has no service.<\/p>\n

Openreach apologised to residents for “third party damage to our cable in Westbourne Park” and said work to restore the connection was under way.<\/p>\n

\"SteveSteve Beech\/BBC<\/p>\n

Engineers were due to start work to replace the damaged cable on Tuesday<\/p>\n

When Mr Rains first reported the fault, he said he was told by his provider Sky it would take up to two weeks to fix. <\/p>\n

“We were quite OK with that at the time because we were going away for a fortnight… but when we came back after two weeks it was still not fixed. <\/p>\n

“We were then told another week but it was still not sorted. We’re now nearly nine weeks in and it’s still not fixed,” he said.<\/p>\n

The dad of two said he was also concerned about the impact the outage was having on his children’s education.<\/p>\n

“My son who’s 11 has just started at secondary school. He can’t do any online learning because doing it on his mobile by mobile data isn’t suitable.<\/p>\n

“My daughter, who’s at Joseph Wright College studying art, can’t print anything off on the printer because of the wi-fi and she can’t download stuff because there’s no broadband, so I’m angry,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Side<\/p>\n

Openreach has apologised to residents and said work to restore the connection was under way<\/p>\n

An elderly neighbour on Mr Rains’s street, who did not want to be named, also told the BBC the outage has had a big effect and wanted those responsible to “hurry up and get this sorted”.<\/p>\n

In a statement, an Openreach spokesperson apologised for the delay “following third party damage to our cable in Westbourne Park” and said engineers would start to replace the damaged cable on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“We know how frustrating and disruptive it is to not have broadband, so we’ll get this done as quickly as possible. We’d like to thank residents for their patience.<\/p>\n

“If you’re experiencing issues with your broadband, please let your service provider know [the company you pay your bill to] and they will get in touch with us,” the Openreach spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Sky said a credit had already been applied to the customer’s account and the issue had been “escalated to the highest point” until resolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Beech, East Midlands Steve Beech\/BBC Matt Rains said his children’s education suffered because of the outage A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1638,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-159243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}