Fears after Openreach cables cut by 'men in black'

Residents in Kempshott have been left without broadband and Wi-Fi since Sunday, July 27, after engineers found that cables had reportedly been cut, sparking fears for vulnerable and elderly residents who rely on the connection for emergency alarms.

Jason Evans, 34, who lives on Buckingham Parade, said his household has had no working Wi-Fi since 10.30pm on Sunday, forcing him to tether his laptop to his mobile phone to carry out work for his job in construction and security.

He explained that his mobile data hotspot connection has affected his work, as the connection speed is nowhere near as fast as his broadband would be. "If I had a Wi-Fi connection, it would be so much quicker," he said, adding that his mobile hotspot is not always reliable.

The shops in Buckingham Parade (Image: Newsquest)

Mr Evans, who said he had recently needed to file an incident report for work, said the outage could not have come at a worse time. "It's not been great because obviously I've missed out."

On top of this, he added: "We've had no TV."

He believes around six people, all dressed in black, cut through cables outside the Tesco store, though the cause has not been officially confirmed. Orange-branded Openreach engineers have since been working in the area to fix the fault, he added.

Mr Evans raised concerns that elderly residents in the area could be left without a working connection for personal alarm systems, which are used to summon help in the event of a fall or medical emergency. "I'm not being funny — worst case scenario if someone were to have died, had a fall, and there's no connectivity to the emergency alarms... no one's going to know," he said.

Hampshire Constabulary confirmed it is investigating a "suspicious incident" in the area.

The St Michael's Hospice charity shop team, Sheila Lloyd, Gordon Dawes, Shelley Robinson and Jenny Ford (Image: Newsquest)

The scale of disruption appears to have varied significantly between businesses. Staff at Tesco said they had not been too badly affected, reporting that tills were running slowly but with no major issues beyond that.

At the St Michael's Hospice charity shop next door, however, manager Shelley Robinson said the fault had caused significant problems. "It has affected us significantly with our gift aiders — we had just installed a new system," she said.

The shop's card machine went down, though staff were able to fall back on a SumUp device. The label printer was also affected meaning price tags couldn't be added to items. Asked to rate the impact out of 10, Ms Robinson gave it a six.

"It's a bit more of an inconvenience, especially to get that machine out," she added. "We couldn't sign up any new gift aiders, which is the main concern." Ms Robinson said the shop's own connection had since been restored, but that she understood residents in the area were still without service. She said she believed a cable had been cut.

Work to fix the cables is taking place outside Tesco (Image: Newsquest)

Meanwhile, Sue Marchant, landlady of the Kestrel in Buckingham Parade, said the pub had not been affected by the outage at all.

A spokesperson for Hampshire Constabulary said: "We were called yesterday (29 July) to a report of a suspicious incident in Basingstoke.

"It was reported that telecom wires on Buckingham Parade had been cut at sometime between Saturday 25 July and Monday 27 July.

"Anyone with information is asked to contact 101, quoting 44260365152."

Openreach has been contacted for a comment.