Residents in a Dorset village are feeling ‘isolated and cut off’ after having little to no broadband or mobile phone signal for more than 10 weeks.

Jane Poore lives in North Bowood and claims she has had very little broadband access or mobile phone signal to her home since Wednesday, July 19.

She said: “We were initially told that it would be fixed by the Friday after, then the Monday. It’s currently a serious problem because we have little mobile signal, I can get one bar of 3G at the back of our garden.”

Openreach, which looks after the network, confirmed the issue occurred when damage was caused to a main cable elsewhere and, due to the nature of the problem, a road needs be dug up so that repairs can be made.

An Openreach spokesperson said: "We're really sorry for the delay here. We need to put a new pole in place, and it's taken far longer than we could have imagined. This is mainly down to finding a safe site for the pole.

“We understand how frustrating it is for people to be without an internet connection, and this is a priority for us. We're doing everything we can to get this done as soon as possible.

"Around six premises are without service, after a cable was damaged. We carried out a survey of the site and, to keep our engineers safe during the repair, a road closure will be required.”

Mrs Poore, her husband and son all work from home which has been impossible due to the issues they are currently facing.

She has had to travel to offices in Bridport and Weymouth which can take up to an hour to get to and she has even worked from one of her neighbour’s homes who still has service.

Her husband has also been travelling to different offices in the area to work

She said: “It’s exhausting trying to find places to work and my son also needs to send files to people abroad.

“It’s not acceptable really – I am exhausted, and I have had enough of it.

“I’m having to maintain a really stressful job with all this going on. I have to leave home if I want to download a document.

“I don’t have time in my work life. It’s not like I want to sit and watch films, I need to function.

“I just don’t know what else to do.”

Mrs Poore also expressed her concern regarding the chance that an emergency could occur.

She described the lack of mobile signal as a ‘fire and emergency risk’ and fears that if an emergency were to happen that they would not be able to get through to the relevant emergency services.

There are a number of other residents in the village facing the same problem including Jane Eades who Mrs Poore explained had told her that ‘she is feeling so isolated and cut off.’

Mrs Eades said: “It was in a chance meeting with a neighbour that I found out what was happening, I wondered why I couldn’t get my TV and other things working.”

“I live in a small community, and it feels like I have been cut off from the outside world.

“It’s the sort of thing you expect to be fixed relatively quickly.”