Rotherham MP calls for compensation following internet, phone and TV blackout

The outage, caused by a severed fibre-optic cable, cut services across Rother Valley, including Treeton, Dinnington, Harthill, Wales, Aston, Aughton, Kiveton Park, Swallownest, and Ulley, as well as further afield to Rawmarsh, Parkgate and Kimberworth, meaning residents struggled to work from home.

Alexander Stafford, MP for Rother Valley, has written to Lutz Schuler, Virgin Media chief executive officer, asking for compensation for those affected by the outage on May 18.

He said: "I have received huge numbers of complaints that constituents have lost money from the loss of the day’s work, either because their employer will not pay them for a day of not working or because they own businesses and could not trade online.

"For the businesses physically open, some reported card machines and other vital technologies would not work.

"Lots of people had to pay huge sums to mobile networks in order to use their 4G mobile ‘hotspot’ connection as they had no alternative if they wanted to work. In the interconnected and online world we live in, an outage of this scale and duration would be concerning during normal times. During this pandemic, it is an issue of the utmost seriousness.”

A Virgin Media spokesman said: “On Monday, a third-party accidentally cut through some of our fibre optic cables causing a loss of services for customers in the Rotherham area.

"Our engineers worked through the night and fixed the fibre break on Tuesday. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

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