Phone chaos for 50 after cable damaged

About 50 homes lost telephone and internet services in parts of north Shropshire after an overhead cable was mysteriously damaged.

The outage hit BT customers in and around Loppington, near Wem.

The company said it was caused by accidental third party damage to an overhead cable at Spencer Bridge. Some homes were left with no working telephone line and no internet access for more than 24 hours.

The company today apologised to those affected and said engineers were sent to repair the damaged cable the day after receiving initial reports of problems.

An affected resident in nearby Newtown today claimed the outage left the community largely cut off.

The woman, who asked not to be named, said she was worried during the incident because it hampered the delivery of vital medical supplies she was waiting for.

She said: "Delivery drivers always struggle to find us out here so they normally call us when they are lost.

"But this time they couldn't as all the phones were down. Mobile phone reception around here is poor so they couldn't call us on our mobiles either.

Emma Tennant, spokeswoman for BT, said: "One of our overhead cables at Spencer Bridge was damaged accidentally by a third party on January 5, but was replaced the following day by engineers.

"Up to 50 customers, all in Loppington, may have been without services for that short time.

"There were an additional two customers without service in the same area for a day or so longer due to a wind damage issue.

"It is regrettable when we suffer any kind of accidental damage to our network. Our priority is always to restore services as soon as we can, which is what we did in both of these cases."

Loppington Parish Council clerk David Edge said the outage may have affected people in the wider area as he was unaware of villagers reporting any problems with their telephone services.