Phone fault leaves Francis Road without broadband for over 2 days

There is an unusual fault on the Francis road telephone lines which at first I thought was just us, until today when Ed came round and said he had the same problem. It started at just before 10pm on Thursday, when we noticed the broadband had dropped out. When we picked up the phone, we then noticed it was a little more serious. Every number we tried to dial caused a line cut off sound. We left it that night as we expected the problem to be gone by the morning. Next morning, the same problem was present, so we phoned our phone provider (Southern Electric) who seemed surprised that we knew how to test the line, but agreed that there was a fault. They said it would be fixed within 48 hours. To their credit the phone was working again within 10 hours, but now there is a very odd nee-nor sound and the broadband still will not connect 🙁

Here is a picture of the point where the telephone lines went down on Thursday 7th April 2011:
My Broadband Ping - Home

P.S. I’m connecting via mobile broadband to post this

Update 10-04-2011: It actually turned out that copper was stolen from the Ashwell exchange and caused problems for all people connected. The copper was fixed / replaced on Friday and most people were back online on Friday, but TalkTalk customers were not back on for another day.

The point at which our broadband was available again (Saturday 9th April 2011):
My Broadband Ping - Home