Anger as phone lines down for over a week

British Telecom has now said it “regrets” any inconvenience caused to residents in the Gelvin Road area of Dungiven and was aiming to have them restored by mid-afternoon yesterday.

One local man said it was absolutely ridiculous that they have not had their service repaired despite numerous calls to BT over the past week.

The man, who does not want to identified, said that the phone lines went down on Wednesday of last week and they have been unable to get the situation resolved since.

He said: “All our phone lines have been have been down now for over a week.

“There is a cable lying down and BT have been made aware of the issue.

“I have been on to them so many times and I know other people have too.

“We have no internet, no telephone line and we have bad mobile service in this area. We have been told it would be fixed and its still down.

“It’s a total disgrace is what it is. For older people on their own the phone line can be their life line. It’s absolutely ridiculous it has taken a week and it’s still not fixed.”

The man said that the residents affected included a woman who was in her 80s who lives alone and has health problems, whil another woman who is house-bound was also affected.

He also said there have been difficulties in trying to access BT staff who were able to deal with the issue affecting the Dungiven residents.

He also said that as far as he was aware residents would most likely still be billed for telecommunication services they had no access to over the past week.

When contacted by the Journal, a BT spokesperson responded to the concerns yesterday.

She said: “When our engineers arrived on site, our cable had been pulled down and it became evident that to repair that specific incident required more complex engineering work.

“All customers will have service restored by mid-afternoon on Thursday, 28th.”

The BT spokesperson added: “We regret any inconvenience caused during the period we were repairing the cable.”