AN INTERNET outage has affected tens of thousands of homes and businesses. More than 30,000 addresses in East Sussex were left without internet or phone lines since 3pm on Wednesday after heavy machinery on a building site severed multiple fibre optic trunk lines. Business owners said they had been losing money and bookings “hand over fist”, and residents in more than 30 towns across were unable to contact relatives or work from home. Many will now be eligible for compensation, payable for outages of more than 24 hours. The epicentre of the outage has been identified as a site on the A259 near The Dell public park, in Peacehaven near the old police station. Yesterday afternoon a row of 18 Openreach vans lined the road and passers-by could see engineers with hacksaws surrounded by ropes and thick cables. Glynn Donaldson, 54, who owns Peacehaven Taxis, is one of thousands of businessmen badly affected by the lack of phone and internet. He said: “We’ve had no phone or internet since Wednesday afternoon and I take bookings over the phone and over the internet. I’m losing money hand over fist.” Marie Hutton, a law lecturer at the University of Sussex, who works from home in Seaford, told The Argus: “I had a student who needed a reference, for a job he needed urgently, and I couldn’t send anything from my computer. “I’ve running the internet off my phone now but I’m trying to really limit my use because I’m on mobile data. “It’s very difficult to do my normal job.” The firm responsible for installing and marinating the country’s phone network is Openreach, which is part of BT. Its engineers worked through the night on Wednesday trying to rectify the fault. The multiple severed cables lie deep underground, and are trunk lines each of which feeds into large areas of the network. The lines are protected by armoured cabling but heavy machinery in use on the building site caused major damage which has resulted in widespread disruption which will take several days to repair fully. Internet service providers (ISPs), which are paid by consumers to provide internet and phone lines, are not directly responsible for the line and cannot take action to correct the fault. ISPs including BT, Talk Talk and Sky have been affected, with the vast majority of the affected lines going to Sky customers. Last night Sky said their internet service had been restored and were monitoring to ensure everything is stable. Sean Macleod, from Denton, told The Argus: “You try to get a response out of them and they’re tweeting about today being National Bikini Day. I pay £150 per month, I expect better service.”
more than 30 addresses in East Sussex have been left without internet access and a phone line, after heavy machinery damaged severed multiple fibre optic trunk lines. ISPs such as Sky , The Argus have been impacted, with the outage hitting BT customers the hardest.