Several of the Internet service provider's (ISP) customers in the town saw their connection go after two power cables on pylons snapped, damaging fibre optic broadband cables underneath on Thursday, February 25. Engineers had to be flown in by helicopter to make repairs.

As well as those in Forres, the firm's customers served by the main Inverness exchange and the Macdhui exchange, also in Inverness, were affected.

A number of Orange's customers contacted the 'Gazette' to complain of problems dealing with the firm through its customer service helpline while their service was down.

"I get very mixed messages depending on what option I choose," said Mary Dufficy, of Meikle Crook.

"Sometimes they have said 'keep trying, it shouldn't be long, we are doing our best'."

She added: "Technical support had me unplugging my live box then typing in numbers and clicking on boxes before I was told 'your ISP is down, try again' and then I was told the fibre optics were broken."

Mrs Dufficy said another member of Orange's customer support team had told her the outage was part of a problem affecting Scotland and Lancashire.

She has contacted Orange for a migration code, which would allow her to move to another ISP, but she said she would prefer not to take this action.

Another Orange user, Claire Feaver, of Woodside Drive, said: "I depend on Internet access to order shopping for my disabled mother and also for accessing the files I need for my college work.

"It will be interesting to see if we get any compensation for the loss of service and the phone charges that we incurred while the system was down."

Another customer, Stephen Smart, of Califer Road, said he had had a similar experience with the company.

"Nobody at Orange wants to take ownership of the problem," he said while his service was down.

"I've stopped calling them two or three times a day because I don't want to hear what I already know."

He added: "If this was in Manchester or Glasgow or Liverpool, fixing this would be a high priority, but because we're up in the Highlands they don't seem to be too concerned."

All three customers have now had their service restored. Mr Smart also said since his service returned on Wednesday night he had been offered two months free service from Orange's customer service department as compensation, and is satisfied with this offer.

A spokesman for Orange said: "We can confirm that some Orange customers in the Inverness exchange, Macdhui exchange and Forres exchange experienced a loss of their broadband services, which was due to severe weather conditions that damaged overhead power lines and cables.

"We worked with a third party supplier and power company to restore full service, which has now resumed.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused".

A spokesman for the third party company whose fibre optic cables were damaged - which Orange have not named - gave their explanation for the incident.

"On Thursday, February 25, adverse weather conditions caused a power cable to break, which, in turn, damaged the fibre responsible for carrying some broadband traffic for Orange in the Inverness area," he said.

"A further power cable break on Saturday, February 27, caused additional damage to the fibre 8km away."

He added: "Damaged high-voltage overhead power cables, live on the incident site, presented a significant health and safety hazard that had to be dealt with by trained electrical engineers before work could begin to replace the damaged fibre that runs alongside them.

"The site was declared safe yesterday (Tuesday, March 2) and work began immediately to replace the fibre."

He also apologised to everyone affected by the broadband outage.

The Orange spokesman added that the company would consider any claims for compensation from a case-by-case basis, and said Forres users with any concerns should contact the firm directly.

d.bick@forres-gazette.co.uk

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