A small Aberdeenshire community was left without any means of contact after fibre-optic cables were chewed through by rodents.
Whistleberry, near Inverbervie, lost all internet services, including phone, television and internet for five days last month.
Some residents were convinced to switch to Openreach fibre-optic, promising efficient and reliable coverage, despite being an isolated community.
However, residents found themselves without broadband after fibre-optic cables connecting their homes were chewed on by rodents.
Jeanine Sydenham, a resident of Whistleberry, says she spoke to an engineer after it was first reported to Openreach.
He told her that the cause of the outage was due to rodents chewing through the highly-important fibre-optic cables.
‘A catalogue of errors’
She said: “There’s been a catalogue of errors here, everybody accepts that these things can happen, but what is not acceptable is the lack of ownership.
“The only reason we found out about rodents was speaking with the engineer on site.
“There was no idea how long the whole system would be down for.”
Mrs Sydenham was shocked to find out that broadband services could be that vulnerable to rodents, having only just acquired the service back in April after waiting years.
She says that broadband for the residents is “a part of life” and with several vulnerable residents, it could be the difference between life and death should an incident occur.
While the issue was eventually resolved, Mrs Sydenham was critical of Openreach and the lack of communication as they failed to provide customers with updates.
She did praise her internet provider Zen, who said they would reimburse her for purchasing a sim card to be able to make phone calls.
Mrs Sydenham, who usually works from home, had to use a friend’s internet connection to be able to continue her work.
She added: “The other issue is if the cable is so susceptible to rodents within months of being installed, that does not bode well for the rest of the country.
“Our neighbour who has a six-month-old baby had to go out a get a router and a sim card because babies can go downhill very quickly, so you need
to access a telephone to get help.”
Mrs Sydenham says the people were sold the idea fibre-optic was more reliable than 4G, however, this incident has damaged her view on that.
‘Very rare’ situation
She said Openreach need to improve its communication both internally and with its customers.
Openreach confirmed that rodents can chew on fibre-optic cables, which results in internet outages but have several safety measures in place to prevent it.
An Openreach spokesperson said: “Rodents may occasionally nibble on the plastic around underground cables.
“It’s very rare for them to chew beyond the coatings of these cables and has never been a major issue in our Scottish networks.
“We have a number of deterrents we can deploy in the network if needed, including the use of armoured cables.
“We’re sorry for the unexpected outage in Whistleberry and restored services to the nine customers affected.”
Conversation