Storm Eunice caused loss of service for over 19,000 customers

Openreach, the company that runs most of the UK's phone and broadband network, has set out how extreme weather affected its services in the winter of 21/22 and what it has changed since. In an account published on its website, it says seven consecutive named storms hit the UK in a three-month period, with Storm Eunice alone causing loss of service for over 19,000 customers¹. It says engineers restored service within days¹.

The company says its network is used by more than 690 service providers, supplying broadband, TV and telephone services to over 28 million homes and businesses across the UK¹. It describes a physical infrastructure of copper and fibre cables, some underground and some carried on telegraph poles, which storms and flooding can damage¹. Beyond named storms, it says it replaces hundreds of poles every year because of bad weather, and that last year it replaced 750 poles damaged by bad weather¹. It puts its field engineering force at 25,000 people working around the clock across the UK¹.

Openreach says the unit uses lessons from previous storm responses to develop processes that help it respond to extreme weather more quickly and safely than before¹. Measures it lists include preparing specialist winter kit for thousands of engineers across the UK, testing whether the network can be rerouted in areas that have proved particularly vulnerable to storms, and reviewing how it shares news and information about disruption with affected communities¹.

The company also reports progress on its Full Fibre build, which it says now reaches more than 10m homes and businesses, towards a plan to reach 25m by the end of 2026¹. It states that fibre cables are more durable than copper, being impervious to electromagnetic interference and resistant to flood damage, and describes the network as much more resistant to the effects of severe weather¹. These are the company's own specifications and claims; no independent assessment of the weather resilience of the different network types is given in its account.

Why it matters for households

The account sets out what Openreach says households can expect and do when storms disrupt phone and broadband. It advises people to tell their phone or broadband provider, the company they pay their bill to, if they or a family member is vulnerable, so they will be prioritised wherever possible during repair work, and points to Ofcom guidance on the subject¹. It advises charging mobile phones and any spare battery packs if extreme weather is approaching¹. It says outages can happen when trees or branches hit cables and equipment, and that people can help by reporting this kind of damage directly to Openreach online, using a What3Words location to pinpoint it¹. It advises always reporting a fault to the service provider so the company knows there is a problem, and contacting the provider for information about a specific circumstance¹.

On power, Openreach says it has backup plans in the event of local power cuts to keep its network running, but that households may find it hard to connect if their own power is disrupted¹. Its account does not give a figure for how many households were affected in total across the winter, nor a breakdown by area, and no regional detail of the Storm Eunice outages has been reported in the material published by the company.

What happens next

Openreach says it continues to assess its responses to severe weather damage and to look for improvements, with the Storm Response Unit developing new processes, winter kit being prepared for engineers, network rerouting being tested in vulnerable areas and its approach to sharing disruption information under review¹. It restates its plan to build Full Fibre to 25m homes and businesses by the end of 2026¹. No dates for further changes have been announced.

For background on how networks are repaired after storms, see how phone and broadband networks respond to storms and outages, and for checking and reporting a fault, see broadband outages. More on severe weather is in the storms and snow section.