Can't send or receive calls - many residents affected

[Thecouncillor]

Last week my landline and many others within the village of Wootton Wawen found that they could not send or receive calls on their landline and we have subsequently been told that Openreach will not repair this until 20th February 2026.

Many of the local residents are elderly and rely on the land line for their emergency call service, to contact the doctors surgery or make a 99 call as they may not have a mobile phone or the signal being so poor they can't make a connection. I spoke with a very helpful person who suggested that Talk Talk customers could contact the Talk Talk Welfare team but others would need to contact their service providers welfare team. If enough people did this then it would be escalated to Openreach. You can probably guess that is the landline was their only phone then this is problematic. Openreach don't seem to have a contact route for this type of event.

Given that there are many vulnerable people within my village is there a faster way that I can escalate this? Thoughts and suggestions would be helpful. I forgot to add that whilst I am a customer affected by this I am the local district councillor and now have the local newspaper wanting a story from me.

[mandisa1-TT]

Thank you so much for the support @ferguson 🙂

Hi there @Thecouncillor We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. We have re-escalated this to the CEO as they are currently case managing this case. We have also highlighted this to your case manager and notified them that you are not receiving any updates.

[ferguson]

This is a sorry state of affairs. The sad fact remains that TalkTalk, along with other providers, remain at the mercy of Openreach. Perhaps you could use your good offices to apply pressure directly on them? Notwithstanding the fact that they usually bat away "individual" issues to the provider, it would seem hard for them to avoid in a case involving several hundred customers with different providers over a lengthy period of time. 

[Thecouncillor]

Well...here we are at day 33 and still no landlines. I was told it would be fixed by the 15/2 then the 20/2 and the latest 3/3 and whilst the local TV company and radio station BBC CWr have also got involved there is still no resolution. The only way I can get any updates appears to be from one of the other 799 customers who are affected (200 of which are like me Talk Talk customers) . Openreach don't issue updates and the today I've tried to get an update from Talk Talk and still no update on when service will be restored.

 I am the district councillor (as well as a customer of Talk Talk) with many of my residents being retired and use their landline to call for help or medical assistance . A number of these 800 will also be using the specialist emergency contact lines that use the telephone network. Is it too much to expect an update today on the day of the latest date that we were promised that service would be restored.

an update. I sense that the local ITV and BBC Tv companies will flag this up to national TV level. all I ask is that we are kept informed by Talk Talk who are our service provider

[Thabile-TT]

Hi there @fr8ys thanks for the support.

[fr8ys]

Link to your profile here - https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/personal-profile:personal-info

[Nicolene-TT]

@Thecouncillor, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have forwarded the information to the appropriate team to support, and we will reach out to you. In the meantime, could you please add your phone number to your community profile?

[Gliwmaeden2]

@Thecouncillor, this article gives relevant information about setting up accounts for priority fault repairs:

https://help-centre.talktalk.co.uk/Manage_account/Manage_Settings_or_Preferences/TalkTalk_Accessibil...

[Gliwmaeden2]

When there are faults with individual lines, and customers have previously notified Talktalk of accessibility needs or vulnerability, Talktalk notes that the service needs priority repairs, @Thecouncillor.

Talktalk won't be able to hurry Openreach up for a wider area issue.

Staff on here can check for information about the general area fault, but can only give individual help to individual customers posting who have completed their community forum profile details, @Thecouncillor.

If you are a customer yourself, please go via your avatar; settings; Personal Information and add your account number or Talktalk phone number there. SAVE CHANGES.