Residents left without internet after ‘spectacular’ collision with BT box in Bedford

Up to 150 homes have been left without internet broadband and telephone lines following a collision which demolished a garden wall and BT broadband box.

The accident occurred on the corner of Oaklands Avenue and Kimbolton Road, Bedford, when a car crashed into the wall, damaging the broadband box which provides internet for the area.

Patrick Ayre said: “Broadband and calls for a large area in central Bedford have been out for four days following what must have been a spectacular crash at 5.31am on Friday.

“All Sky and Now broadband users in the Kimbolton Avenue area are affected and the providers have made no effort to contact customers or provide any support during this very lengthy outage.”

Another resident said: “We can see from our CCTV this happened just before 5am. There appeared to be two cars involved, driving fast. One car hit the back of the other which appearing to be chasing it.

“A load of girls and boys got out and walked away and two cars drove off, one down Pemberley Avenue one down St Michael’s Road.”

"BT says it may take weeks to repair. We have no internet at all which is not great when my son is doing exams soon."

A spokesman for Outreach, which runs the broadband network, said: “Our engineers are busy replacing one of our roadside broadband cabinets, after it was completely destroyed on Friday.

"The severity of the damage means we’re effectively having to completely rebuild it, which is a huge task and takes time. We know how difficult it is for people to be without broadband – this damage is affecting around 140 houses – so our engineers are working as quickly and safely as they can.

“They’re having to replace the concrete base, disconnect and reconnect power, put a new cabinet in place and then re-connect all the lines inside it. We know the situation is far from ideal, but we’re doing all we can, as quickly as possible.”

A spokesman for Beds Police said: “We would always encourage members of the public to report any incidents or information that could support an investigation via our online reporting tool beds.police.uk/ro/report or by calling 101.”