Thieves took 2,000 metres of copper cable in one Essex town — and the phone lines are the last to come back

30 October 2026. In the Essex town of South Woodham Ferrers, thieves have stolen more than 2,000 metres of Openreach copper cable this month alone — the latest incident, reported on 19 October, followed a similar theft in the same area in August. The company says residents, businesses and its own teams are "bearing the brunt of this criminal behaviour", leaving engineers with complex and time-consuming repairs. Full fibre in the area is back; the remaining copper broadband and phone services are still being reconnected "as quickly as possible". For any business still running a phone line on that older copper, it is a sharp illustration of why the number is the asset to move — and with 93 days to go until the PSTN closes on 31 January 2027, there is no replacement line coming.

Theft is a nationwide problem, not a one-off

Openreach has revealed that since April 2024, more than 100,000 people across the UK have temporarily lost their landline or broadband because of copper theft, with 153km of cable stolen between April 2024 and April 2026 — almost the distance from London to Bristol. The company has partnered with metal recycler EMR to put new signage across UK sites and reinforce a policy of refusing any material suspected of being stolen, and arrests have risen. But for the businesses affected, none of that restores a dead line — repairs are measured in days, not hours.

What a stolen cable does to a business number

A line-side fault takes the whole connection down: calls ring out to nothing, and there is no forwarding, no voicemail, no redirect to mobile. A virtual number on an IP platform behaves differently — the number lives in the network, not on the cable, so it keeps routing to mobiles, softphones or another office even when the premises line is cut. On a Pay Monthly plan, forwarding across up to 10 destinations plus voicemail-to-email means an outage at the office is a reroute, not a lost day.

The switch-off makes the trade easy

As of today the WLR3 exception-order window has closed, and the final copper orders complete by 31 January 2027. Cable theft will not be a reason to restore analogue lines after that date — the network simply will not exist to repair. Our PSTN switch-off guide sets out the sequence, and the copper economics are already turning against hanging on: rental is rising, repairs are slow, and the 1.6 million stop-sell effect means no going back — see the copper stop-sell figures. Port the number, cease the line, and a thief stealing 2,000 metres of cable becomes an inconvenience instead of a crisis.

Related: The PSTN switch-off guide · WLR3 exception orders close 30 October