Oxford outage on Thur 15th Jan 2004

[george davson]

Hello folks,

Coming in on a modem tonight because my CM (and analog cable TV) is down.

This is probably on account of something nasty in the Abingdon Road, involving a Southern Electric cable. From today's Oxford Mail:

Oxford's telephone network has been thrown into chaos after half of the city's NTL lines stopped working on January 15.

Engineers said a severed cable was the cause of the problem, which started at about 10.30am.

The underground electricity cable in Abingdon Road caused damage to an NTL cable, leaving 900 customers unable to make or receive calls.

Southern Electric secured the high voltage cable during the afternoon before NTL started work repairing the damage.

Jennifer Mcgregor, of Southern Electric, said: "Our electricity lines have been in place for many years.

"Often when contractors put new cables on top this causes damage to ours and this leads to problems like this."

My question is, is there anyone here who lives on the Abingdon Road in Oxford? If so, can you see those brave NTL engineers there, working through the night to restore our service? Or have they all buggered off until tomorrow?

[george davson]

Answering my own question here.

Cable TV and Cable modem suddenly came up smiling (for me at least) around 11 p.m. That's not a bad turnaround, especially if it involved a bloke with a JCB.

God, did i get this freebie dialup Tiscali account in vain?

george