This message from the area manager for Openreach was distributed via Facebook. It concerns the major outage of telephone and Internet services in parts of Milton:

Hi all, I’m the Cambridge area manager for Openreach and thought it’s important to keep you all in the loop with recent events.

Unfortunately waterbeach exchange has been hit three times this week alone by large-scale cable thefts along the A10 down to Ely Road cutting off over 2000 customers fed from different cabinets in Milton.

We have crews working around the clock to reinstate and connect the cables to which they have damaged over 2kms worth from waterbeach to Milton which is a hugely complex challenge not helped by todays dangerous storms.

I appreciate it can be a hugely distressing time without service but we are doing everything we can to restore it and also to try and prevent any furthers thefts.

The first happened Monday evening (14 February) at around 2147 and the following night around midnight.

If you have any information that could help the police with their investigations please contact crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.