Residents in the Cambridgeshire village of Wicken were left without broadband for nearly a week after a vehicle struck an Openreach telegraph pole. The outage lasted from 2 to 8 July and also affected nearby Upware, according to people who spoke to the Ely Standard.
Openreach told the Ely Standard that engineers had to replace both the pole and its overhead fibre cables. Because the work took place alongside a road through the village, traffic management also had to be arranged before repairs could be completed safely, adding to the time people were left without service.
Residents told the newspaper this wasn’t the first time damage along the A1123 had taken their broadband offline. Rod Fox said several road accidents had struck the village’s fibre infrastructure since 2024, while Wicken Parish Council chairman Bill Pepper questioned whether placing the cable so close to a busy road had left it unnecessarily exposed.
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With mobile reception unable to provide a reliable backup, the outage affected home workers, local businesses and people relying on broadband to stay in contact with others. Resident Alastair Kidd told the Ely Standard that losing the connection can affect people’s mental and emotional health, particularly older residents living alone.
District councillor Lucius Vellacott told the newspaper that he had written to Openreach asking for better service and communication. Openreach doesn’t deal directly with individual broadband accounts, however. If your connection fails, you must report it to your broadband provider, which then raises the repair and deals with Openreach on your behalf.
Residential users whose providers belong to Ofcom’s automatic compensation scheme may receive £10.34 for every day a complete loss of service remains unfixed after two full working days. The fault must first be reported to the provider. Accidental third-party damage doesn’t normally remove that entitlement unless a specific exception applies, although the scheme doesn’t cover business broadband.
