Hundreds of residents left without phone landlines in Norden

Photo: Sven Bähren - stock.adobe.com

Residents in Norden have been left without a telephone connection during July

Hundreds of residents in the Norden village have been left without a landline telephone connection due to a faulty underground cable.

Residents across the village have reported no landline service since the start of July, with some reporting a lack of phone line since the middle of June. Others have reported ‘patchy’ broadband service for a similar period of time.

Work is now underway on Edenfield Road, near the junction with Somerset Grove, to repair a 60-metre underground cable, which requires 40m of new cable housing and a carriageway box. Once complete, engineers will install a new cable to get the telephone and broadband services up and running – which is hoped to begin this weekend.

A spokesperson for Openreach, a subsidiary of the BT Group, which looks after the copper wires and fibre cables connecting phone lines and broadband, said the company hopes to begin restoring service over the weekend.

The spokesperson said: “We’re very sorry for the loss of phone and broadband some people in the Rochdale area are experiencing which has been caused by a faulty underground cable.

“We haven’t been able to start repairs as quickly as we would have liked due to the need for 3-way traffic management to locate the fault and because the cable is located within a ‘zone of interest’.

“This requires a mandatory seven-day check for other services such as electric and gas to be completed before any work can begin.

“Repairs, which include civil engineering to build 40 metres of new underground duct, are now well underway and we hope to begin restoring service to customers over the weekend.”

BT has also been contacted for comment.