Hundreds of homes and businesses are without access to the internet today after workers cut through cables.
The contractors, working on behalf of Vodafone, severed a large fibre bundle while carrying out repairs to the network.
Internet providers declared a ‘major service disruption’. Work is now underway to fix the cables and restore people’s broadband but it could take several more hours.
The incident happened on the A1237 on the bridge over the railway line and river close to Shipton Road.
The subsequent roadworks caused traffic chaos during this morning’s rush hour.
We have asked Vodafone to comment and will update when they come back to us.
One of the first to spot the problem at 8.55pm was telecoms and broadband specialists York Data Services.
Even though the company had nothing to do with the outage, it immediately sent its own engineers out to help sort out the problem.
Major artery
Contractors had severed a bundle of about 1,000 cables mainly belonging to broadband fibre provider CityFibre, managing director of York Data Services Mark Fordyce told YorkMix.
“They have gone across a major artery of cables going through that bridge, and taken out mainly CityFibre circuits,” he said.
“It has taken out everything going across that bridge, which has a serious knock-on impact. And we know that it’s not just CityFibre circuits, we know some Openreach circuits have been impacted as well.”
Where the incident happened
Many internet service providers, including TalkTalk, EE, Vodafone and York Data Services, use CityFibre.
He estimates several hundred customers have been affected by the blackout.
“We knew about it as soon as it happened around around nine o’clock. Our engineers were out there during the night, working alongside CityFibre to try and get our customers back up as fast as we can.”
He said it would “probably be late this afternoon” before services were restored.
“We know what it is, where it is, and we’re working alongside the companies to get everything restored.”
Customers of York Data Services, which is based at York Science Park, contacted YorkMix to praise the company for being the only one to keep them up to date with what was happening.
“We pride ourselves on being that kind of caring company, going above and beyond,” Mark said.
“Even though it’s out of our control, we try and use our local knowledge to help minimise the damage and get things back up again.”
York Data Services is issuing updates on the incident here.