Virgin Media confirms south Wales broadband outage
Virgin Media has confirmed its broadband network in south Wales sustained "malicious damage" this week, affecting the services received by Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board.
Local police said the cable theft took place at around 01:20 GMT yesterday (February 2nd 2012) in the suburban district of Sketty, about two miles west of Swansea city centre, reports the South Wales Evening Post.
It is believed the incident cut off the broadband service received by several local health facilities, including Singleton, Morriston and Neath Port Talbot hospitals.
Although backup computer systems lessened the impact at these sites, an outage at the Westfa Day Centre in Phillips Parade caused more of a problem, as it does not have the same precautions in place.
A spokeswoman from Virgin Media insisted full service has been restored and added: "This is one of a number of recent incidents of cable theft which have taken place in Swansea in recent weeks, affecting internet service providers and other industries, such as rail transport."
This is the latest issue to hit the Virgin Media broadband network, coming after the company's ADSL infrastructure suffered a major national outage on January 17th, with the company attributing the problem to a "routing hardware issue".
