Thousands of people around Thurnscoe in South Yorkshire were left without broadband and telephone services for two days after thieves attacked Openreach’s underground network. The outage affected homes and businesses throughout Friday and Saturday, according to BBC Yorkshire.
Residents told the BBC that elderly relatives had been left completely cut off, with no other way to contact their families. Luke Wheat, councillor for Dearne North, said the disruption was still being felt across the community and had been particularly serious for older and vulnerable people.
South Yorkshire Police told the BBC that manhole covers were stolen from Nicholas Lane in Goldthorpe on Friday morning and wiring underneath was damaged. Openreach said its engineers worked as quickly as possible to repair what it described as extensive damage.
Image Credit: Exploring Yorkshire By Rail
St Helen’s Church in Thurnscoe, South Yorkshire
A broadband outage can quickly become a safety problem
This wasn’t an isolated incident. People in Carcroft were also reportedly cut off by cable theft last week, while police say offences have risen sharply across Doncaster since the summer. More than £1 million worth of copper has already been recovered locally, without counting the much larger cost of repairing the damage.
Openreach says copper theft has disrupted broadband or landlines for more than 100,000 people across the UK since April 2024. Criminals have stolen 153km of cable and forced engineers to spend 1.2 million working hours repairing the network instead of upgrading it.
If a complete loss of service remains unfixed for more than two full working days after you report it, customers of providers signed up to Ofcom’s automatic compensation scheme receive £10.34 for each qualifying day. As this outage ran across Friday and Saturday, however, it may not have lasted long enough to trigger a payment.
