Angry tone to Kidderminster phones chaos (From Kidderminster Shuttle)

Angry tone to Kidderminster phones chaos

8:53am Thursday 13th September 2012 in News By William Tomaney

KIDDERMINSTER residents who have been without phone or internet connections for more than a week say they are “upset” and “angry” and being kept in the dark by BT.

One Woodland Avenue resident, who works from home, told The Shuttle he had been cut off on Tuesday, September 4 and had to visit his friend’s house and use public wi-fi to respond to “urgent emails”.

Another, who works as a nurse and wished to remain anonymous, said she had lost a week’s worth of work because people had not been able to call her landline.

A BT spokeswoman said the incident was caused by damage to underground cables. She apologised and said engineers were trying to fix the problem but safety concerns were causing the delay.

It is unknown how widespread the outage is but the spokeswoman said BT had recieved 20 reports of faults and The Shuttle has talked to residents in Woodland Avenue and Broomfield Road.

BT confirmed the cables were damaged at the junction of Franche Road and Broomfield Road.

Richard Matthews, of Woodland Avenue said: “I reported the problem on Tuesday last week and received a text saying ‘we aim to fix the fault by 5pm on Friday’. Since then I have heard nothing.

“It has also affected my mobile as I use a signal booster. I am having to make calls from the back garden and street and go to my friend’s house to check emails.”

Mr Matthews is Midlands secretary for the British Beer and Pub Association.

“I need to keep in contact with people so it is vitally important,” he said. “I have emails coming in and many require urgent responses so it is throwing everything down.

“It is difficult to keep across what is going on and we are not being kept in the picture.”

The BT spokeswoman said: “We have been trying to arrange for the necessary repairs to be completed but due to the location we will need temporary traffic lights in order to complete the repairs safely.”

She added it was not only affecting BT customers.

A Broomfield Road resident, who did not want to be named, said she felt “very angry and upset” and a Woodland Avenue man said his phone was “dead as a dodo”.