MORE than 50 homes in the remote Brendon Hills have had no landline phones or internet connection for more than a week despite appeals to BT that old people and those living alone have been robbed of their vital lifelines.

And poor or non-existent mobile phone reception has meant that in some cases residents have had to walk or drive some distance to get a signal.

The worst affected areas are around Wimbleball, Brown Lane, Upton, Brompton Regis and Huish Champflower where houses and farms have been cut off since February 9 – and have received no indication about what the problem is and how long it is likely to last.

“No one has been to see us and there’s no sign of any repair activity,” said Mrs Jacqueline Carter, of Higher Ground Farm, Brown Lane.

“With mobile phone reception being so bad we completely rely on landlines. For instance we are expecting the vet but he can’t contact us – there’s no mobile signal on the farm.

“What’s more worrying is that there are elderly people around here who might need medical or other urgent help and who don’t have mobiles or can’t get signals at home. What are they going to do in an emergency?

“When we spoke to BT we got someone in India who said it was a serious underground cable problem.

“Someone else told us trees had brought the wires down during recent gales and a road would need to be closed.

“But when we spoke to the council they knew nothing about a road closure.”

John Lawson, a retired teacher living near Brompton Regis, said he had to drive two miles to get a mobile signal to make a doctor’s appointment.

“If I had been housebound, goodness knows what I would have done. It’s very worrying when something like this happens and you live in the back of beyond,” he said.

A BT spokesman told the Free Press this week that engineers were working on underground cables in the area but it was very unusual that repairs would take so long.

“We try to get people back on the phone within 24 hours at the latest, so this must be something pretty serious,” he said.

A spokesman for the PlusNet network, which provides services in the Brendon Hills area, said it had also received complaints.

“We use the BT network so any engineering faults are their responsibility,” he said. “Recent exceptionally bad weather has built up a BT backlog which could be responsible for this delay.”

Brendon Hills district councillor Keith Turner said that BT engineers were currently working on phone line faults in the area and he hoped the problem would be fixed very soon.

“The fault seems very intermittent – my phone is fine, but two neighbours have been cut off for a week,” he said. “It also seems to be spread over several different exchanges.”