Attempted broadband cable theft leaves Highlands customers offline

The attempted theft of a subsea fibre optic broadband cable has left thousands of residents and businesses across the Highlands without internet access.

BT said the problem affected communities served by nine exchanges - Ardvaser, Balallan, Duntulm, Glendale, Glenshiel, Kilillan, Scalpay, Skeabost and Uig - although service has since been restored at eight of these.

It is thought that more than 9,000 customers were affected by the problem, while 344 still had no service as of 11:00 BST on Friday (June 8th 2012).

The outage occurred after thieves attempted to steal the cable crossing Loch Carron in the mistaken belief that it contained copper.

A BT spokesman said: "This attempted theft is causing huge disruption of service and inconvenience to our customers, but it is symptomatic of the times we live in."

Last month, around 20,000 broadband and landline customers in Eastbourne and Brighton were left without connectivity after a power outage hit BT's Eastbourne exchange.