Hundreds in Petworth left without landline or broadband service, sparking concerns for the elderly

Openreach apologised for the disruption and said it was doing its best to get the repair work done.

Margaret Tipler, from Kent, said her mother, who lives in Petworth, was one of the 300 households affected when the service went down on October 11.

“Her mobile doesn’t have signal in her home so she is entirely cut off – I’m extremely worried about her,” she said.

Margaret said she had contacted the company many times over the issue ‘but to no avail and no sense of urgency’.

She said: “I cannot believe they have left people without either power for so many weeks and no hope of a solution – they need to think of all the vulnerable and elderly who couldn’t phone or email anyone if they had an accident or especially if they fall ill during this pandemic.”

An Openreach spokesperson said: “We’re really sorry for the disruption to service that the residents of Petworth have experienced.

“Damage was caused to our telecoms infrastructure by water ingress and we’re doing our best to get the repair work done.

“It’s a complex repair which requires building more than 50 metres of new underground duct and improving one of our footway boxes to make way for a completely new section of cabling.

“Digging out the footway has taken longer than initially expected due to space restrictions and thick concrete under the footway layer, but we expect this will be completed late this afternoon (Wednesday 21 October).

“We’ll then begin replacing the faulty cable tomorrow and expect to have customers back in service by Thursday evening.

“We know how frustrating it is to be without phone or broadband and we’d like to thank the people of Petworth for their patience while we make the repairs.

“We encourage anyone experiencing problems with their service to report them to their service provider who will then inform us.”