This briefing on a cable damage incident in East London is for all Communications Providers.

Openreach can confirm that, following significant damage, by a third party, to cables in a deep underground tunnel on the afternoon of Saturday 4th April, a large number of end users in parts of East London are currently experiencing a loss of service.

A third party contractor has caused significant damage to one of our deep underground tunnels resulting in the loss of service to a large number of end users in parts of East London.

Due to the nature of the damage, which happened 32 meters below street level, and the restricted access to the site, it is not possible at this stage to provide an exact timeframe as to when service will be restored to all customers.

Because of the severity of the damage, the tunnel is completely blocked and to restore the cables they will need to be brought up to the surface either side of the tunnel and then routed over land through existing and new duct. The new duct is being built today as we gain permission to close roads and do the necessary work.

As a consequence of this large scale operation it may be some days before we see all services fully restored.

Openreach engineers are working extremely hard to resolve this situation and we have already successfully restored service to a number of affected end users in the early hours of Sunday morning using alternative methods of connection.

We would like to apologise to all impacted customers.

Further updates will be sent as the situation changes.

If you wish to discuss the information contained within this brief, please contact your Sales and Relationship Manager.

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