{"id":178146,"date":"2025-09-24T08:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178146\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T08:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:18:13","slug":"familys-anger-over-extended-broadband-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/178146\/","title":{"rendered":"Family&#8217;s anger over extended broadband outage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758463509_518_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 iMuqLZ hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/131326f0-9860-11f0-b567-dbb771c68d85.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"STEVE BEECH\/BBC NEWS Man with goatee beard in dark shirt in front of a hedge\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi\"\/>STEVE BEECH\/BBC NEWS<\/p>\n<p>Matt Rains said his children&#8217;s education suffered because of the outage<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">A family from Derby have said they are at their wits&#8217; end after being left without broadband or a landline for more than eight weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">Openreach apologised to residents for &#8220;third party damage to our cable in Westbourne Park&#8221; and said work to restore the connection was under way.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758463509_518_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 iMuqLZ hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/526ad1e0-9860-11f0-b567-dbb771c68d85.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"STEVE BEECH\/BBC NEWS A telegraph pole with a yellow &quot;caution&quot; ribbon wrapped around it\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi\"\/>STEVE BEECH\/BBC NEWS<\/p>\n<p>Engineers were due to start work to replace the damaged cable on Tuesday<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">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<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We were quite okay with that at the time because we were going away for a fortnight&#8230; but when we came back after two weeks it was still not fixed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We were then told another week but it was still not sorted. We&#8217;re now nearly nine weeks in and it&#8217;s still not fixed,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">The dad-of-two said he was also concerned about the impact the outage was having on his children&#8217;s education.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;My son who&#8217;s 11 has just started at secondary school. He can&#8217;t do any online learning because doing it on his mobile by mobile data isn&#8217;t suitable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;My daughter, who&#8217;s at Joseph Wright College studying art can&#8217;t print anything off on the printer because of the Wi-fi and she can&#8217;t download stuff because there&#8217;s no broadband, so I&#8217;m angry,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758463509_518_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 iMuqLZ hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6a10e8d0-9864-11f0-9fad-d35dd71c4be3.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Side image of an Openreach van with the words &quot;Openreach, Connecting you to your network&quot;\" class=\"sc-86c96223-0 fHZDyi\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Openreach has apologised to residents and said work to restore the connection was under way<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">An elderly neighbour on Mr Rains&#8217; street, who did not want to be named, also told the BBC the outage has had a big effect and wanted those responsible to &#8220;hurry up and get this sorted&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">In a statement, an Openreach spokesperson apologised for the delay &#8220;following third party damage to our cable in Westbourne Park&#8221; and said engineers would start to replace the damaged cable on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;We know how frustrating and disruptive it is to not have broadband, so we&#8217;ll get this done as quickly as possible. We&#8217;d like to thank residents for their patience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">&#8220;If you&#8217;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,&#8221; the Openreach spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 bJoRPJ\">A spokesperson for Sky said a credit had already been applied to the customer&#8217;s account and the issue had been &#8220;escalated to the highest point&#8221; until resolved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STEVE BEECH\/BBC NEWS Matt Rains said his children&#8217;s education suffered because of the outage A family from Derby&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[174,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-178146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-internet","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}