Residents affected by extended Tring power outage could receive automatic compensation

Tring residents impacted by the extended internet outage are encouraged to check whether they are eligible for automatic compensation.

Broadband provider, Openreach, which revealed that the internet outage was down to rodents tampering with cables.

Many residents were left without any internet from Saturday (29 July) through until, in some cases, the early hours of Wednesday morning (2 August).

Speculation on social media suggested that thousands of homes were affected by the shortage, including a series of businesses trading on the High Street. Many customers were also unable to use landline phones on Monday and Tuesday.

Openreach that oversees broadband connections on behalf of BT is regulated by Ofcom, which operates an automatic compensation policy.

Meaning residents could be entitled to compensation for last week’s chaos. Ofcom states if an internet provider’s service has stopped working and it is not fully fixed after two full working days, customers will receive £9.33 compensation for each calendar day that the service is not repaired.

Openreach states that the internet problems were caused by an animal attempting to make a nest in one of its underground ducts, in what it has described as a ”extremely rare” incident.

Photographs from the scene provided by Openreach show where a rodent has attempted to gnaw through the cables.

The internet provider says that typically it would take a drill to penetrate the outer wiring.

To resolve the major issue Openreach adds that its engineers were working round the clock, to get the town reconnected.

"This effort was initially hampered because access to our underground chambers had been covered over within a private property, but once that was resolved, connectivity to the vast majority of affected customers was restored by 2:00am on Wednesday 2 August," the company states.

"Our repair included rerouting 650 metres of cabling to avoid disturbing the nest, and the last few remaining services were back online by early Wednesday afternoon.”

One resident compared trying to access internet on their phone to being at a festival, such was the unusually high demand in the Hertfordshire market town.

Neighbouring homes in Berkhamsted, and even Bucks villages like Cheddington, were said to be affected.