Town

Residents affected by Tring power outage could receive compensation

single image

Encouragement is given to Tring residents affected by the internet outage to verify their eligibility for automatic compensation.

Broadband provider, Openreach,  revealed that the internet outage was down to rodents tampering with cables.

Residents were left without any internet from Saturday (29 July) through until, the early hours of Wednesday morning (2 August).

Speculation on social media suggested that thousands of homes were affected by the shortage, including series of businesses trading on the High Street.

Many customers were also unable to use landline phones on Monday and Tuesday.

Openreach that oversees broadband connections on behalf of BT is regulated by Ofcom, which operates an automatic compensation policy.

Ofcom states if an internet provider’s service has stopped working and it is not fully fixed after two full working days, customers will receive £9.33 compensation for each calendar day that the service is not repaired.

Openreach states that the internet problems were caused by an animal attempting to make a nest in one of its underground ducts.

Photographs from the scene provided by Openreach show where a rodent has attempted to gnaw through the cables.

The internet provider says that typically it would take a drill to penetrate the outer wiring.

To resolve the major issue Openreach adds that its engineers were working round the clock, to get the town reconnected.

“This effort was initially hampered because access to our underground chambers had been covered over within a private property, but once that was resolved, connectivity to the vast majority of affected customers was restored by 2:00am on Wednesday 2 August,” the company states.

“Our repair included rerouting 650 metres of cabling to avoid disturbing the nest, and the last few remaining services were back online by early Wednesday afternoon.”

One resident compared trying to access internet on their phone to being at a festival.

Neighbouring homes in Berkhamsted and Bucks villages like Cheddington, were said to be affected.

You may like