Thanks both.

The customers are limping on the back-up copper connectivity, which from a rural site like this is of pretty limited bandwidth per circuit. We've had to curtail site monitoring to the minimum required for safety and security to allow this.
Being a rural site, cellular does not provide a good solution.

What is rather disappointing is that, far from being pro-active in pushing the repair work along, IDNet are giving us "we have no control over this. We will of course keep monitoring and updating you as soon as we know more." They now admit that Openreach have not even completed their internal approvals process to schedule the repair.

Latest update. Openreach are going to have their contractor to survey the road to decide what traffic management will be required.

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve. Well, that will be two days under a month since we lost service.

If the cables were under the road, I would be slightly more understanding, but they're actually under a wide grass verge, with enough room to park vehicles without impeding traffic.

Anyhow, the problem with the cable is said to be that 150m of it has been damaged by "rodents" who have been nesting in one of the street boxes.

I wonder, is it really the case that there is not one intact spare fibre available in the various cables in the damaged span that could get us reconnected, while they get on with designing their traffic management scheme?

Out of interest has the rodent nibbling happened between CBT and the Splitter or between the Splitter and the Ag node?

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve.

Don't think Openreach will work on xmas eve! Maybe I am wrong!

In reply to a post by adslmax:

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

They plan to start work on Christmas Eve.

Don't think Openreach will work on xmas eve! Maybe I am wrong!

You are.

exactly.. Theres a network to maintain. 24/7 365 (366) days a year

Plus christmas eve for most is a normal working day. Christmas day, boxing day and new years day are bank holidays and so openreach may only do emergency work/break fix but christmas eve is just another normal day of the year.

Day 23. Having not been able to get anywhere via IDNet, I followed the private advice of a leading contributor to this thread, for which many thanks. Result: connection restored 4pm this afternoon.

I am not sure where the splitter that feeds this circuit is located, but since there is very little Openreach FTTP in this rather rural area my best guess would be cable damage between CBT and splitter.

As a result of this incident, I have looked through the T&Cs of a number of business CPs and this has proved a bit of an eye opener. While the web-sites trumpet the reliability of service and quote time to repairs, following Openreach's service levels, the small, and some of it is very small, print generally excludes liability for outages, irrespective of length, and in most cases provides no compensation either.

The major exceptions are Cerberus and BT Business. Cerberus's position is clearly stated on their web-site. The BT Business T&Cs are lengthy and require combining terms from a number of web-links, so it's no easy read. However, if you work through it, they specify the circumstances under which they provide compensation for loss of service- these are broad enough to be useful- and the amount payable, which is reasonable.

So the take-away is "Don't believe what the web-site advertises, when buying business broadband. Read the small print." For consumer broadband, at least there is the Ofcom scheme for those CPs that offer it.

We had a problem with a TalkTalk Business phoneline, didn't get a penny compensation, we would have got compensation if it had been a residential line. As TTB where the only company offering the service we wanted, at the price we where happy with, can't complain too much

Did they confirm if its a temporary or permanent fix? Hopefully if its between the Splitter and CBT its a new CBT and tail but may be just two track nodes and a short length of fibre across the damage.