Thousands lose broadband after workers break cable

Thousands of Sky and Virgin Media customers have lost their broadband connection after a cable was damaged by workers.

Sky said the issue began shortly before midnight on Wednesday in parts of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

It said it hoped repairs, which were taking “longer than hoped”, would be completed by 16:00 GMT.

Virgin Media said the problem extended to neighbouring counties, including Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire.

Responding to customers’ tweets, Sky said the problem has been caused by a “fibre-cable break”.

In a statement, the company said: “We are aware of an issue with some of our broadband and talk services around Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

“There are engineers on site working hard to fix this.”

A Sky spokesman said the cable was damaged during engineering work, but could not give the location.

Virgin said the “break” had affected services in areas including Southampton, Portsmouth, Andover, Winchester, Bournemouth, Poole, Salisbury and Yeovil.

The website Downdetector, which measures loss of broadband, said more than 4,000 Virgin customers had reported problems.

It said Sky and BT customers were also experiencing issues, although BT said it had “no outages at the moment”.