‘Farmer/Fibre interface problem’ blamed for Industrial Estate internet outage

Parts of Wrexham Industrial Estate were without their super fast internet connections today, after a suspected cable-slice incident has knocked out the feeds.

Update 2: As of mid afternoon we are told the Industrial Estate is back online!

Update: The issue occurred close to Stretford in Manchester, and as of midday we are advised a ‘splice’ of a cable is underway and a fix is due some point this afternoon.

Original information below…

Wrexham.com’s IT expert James gave us some more detailed technical information: “There’s been a farmer-fibre interface problem near Manchester”.

A story on El Reg explains the suspected reason as a ‘trencher slices through critical cable’, that has also affected connectivity to a data centre in St Asaph with other updates saying a farmer digging a 2m trench caused the issue.

Zayo, who run the backbone fibre network affected, have been approached for comment.

@wrexham No internet on Industrial Estate. Just been told a farmer dug through one of the main fibre links in the area at around 9pm, taking out interweb for large chunk of N Wales. Repairs ongoing since midnight, no end in sight. 🚧🕳️🚜🚧

— WonkoTheSane (@WonkoTheSaneUK) June 1, 2018

Last week the Industrial Estate was hit by a different outage, that time a vehicle had crashed into BT equipment meaning broadband connections were taken offline.

Top image: Zayo’s local network map showing their Long Hual Lit Fiber in orange and the Metro Lit in blue.