BT broadband issues continue in Bournemouth

Residents living near the town centre have experienced a distinct drop off in broadband connection in recent weeks, with internet regularly disconnecting in the evening time before returning in the afternoon.

This comes after around 2,000 people were apparently without regular broadband for around two days in early January, despite Openreach judging the lack of connection as having lasted “just over two hours”.

Holdenhurst Road resident Adam Nichols has accused Openreach, a subsidiary of BT, of “lying” about the connection issues having had intermittent broadband for nearly three weeks.

He told the Echo: “They initially said it was fixed but it clearly hasn’t been. On Tuesday it was off which meant I wasn’t able to work that whole day.

“I would expect them to fix something like this far quicker. We’re paying for internet and subscriptions we haven’t been able to use, some people nearby are shielding because of Covid and can’t use the internet – I’m pretty disgusted to be honest. Nearly three weeks of intermittent supply and still not fixed.”

• Read more: Almost 2,000 lost broadband as different accounts reported

Adam also said he and neighbours have had next to no contact with engineers about how long the works would last for.

An Openreach spokesperson said: “Our network in Bournemouth was affected by a fault in one of our green cabinets a couple of weeks ago and despite the best efforts from our team of specialist engineers, we’ve still got ongoing problems.

“They relate to the electrics of the cabinet and the only way to fix them permanently is to overhaul it; work will begin on Wednesday (January 26) to do this as quickly and safely as possible.

“In the meantime, our engineers will manually change the batteries over on the cabinet every six hours which may result in an intermittent loss of service.

"We’re really sorry if this causes any disruption and ask for local residents and businesses to bear with us while we make the repairs.”