Extreme weather and storms

What we’re doing to keep Britain connected during extreme weather

How you can prepare for extreme weather effecting your broadband and telephone services

We’re doing everything we can to prepare for the winter weather. Here are some of the ways that you can prepare:

• Tell your provider if you’re vulnerable: Let your phone or broadband provider - the company you pay your bill to - know if you or a family member is vulnerable, so you’ll be prioritised, wherever possible, during any repair work. If you’re unsure, Ofcom publishes useful guidance on this.
• Prepare for an outage: Make sure your mobile phone and any spare battery packs are fully charged if you know extreme weather is approaching. It could provide you with vital access to help, online services, and contact with friends and family.
• Report damage: Outages can happen because trees or branches hit our cables and equipment. You can help us fix things faster by reporting this kind of issue directly to us online. Use a What3Words location to help us pinpoint the damage.
• Check your power: We have backup plans in the event of local power cuts to keep our network running, but you might find it hard to connect if your own power is disrupted.
• Consider upgrading to Full Fibre: Our Full Fibre broadband network now reaches more than 10m homes and businesses across the UK.  As well as being faster, more reliable and future-proof, it’s more resistant to the effects of bad weather, like extremes of temperature and flooding. Check now to find out if you can upgrade.
• More information: If phone and broadband services are disrupted, you can find out the latest information we have at openreach.com. Always report a fault to your service provider so we know there’s a problem.

What to do if your broadband, tv, or phone service is affected

If your broadband or phone service is impacted by extreme weather, contact your service provider - they’ll be able to give you more information about your specific circumstance. If there’s a network issue, they’ll let us know and we’ll send a team out to repair the damage as soon as we can.