A lot of folks have been having problems getting the correct compensation from their ISPs if any at all. You should normally have received around £410.

Some may be due less if the ISP gave mobile (4G) fallback. And some may be due more if the fault lingered on.

The idea of this post is you can point your ISP to back-up your claim.

For those who did not get the correct amount of compensation the first section gives the correct dates. For those who were refused compensation because it “was out with our control” the second section quotes the “ISPs” industry’s code of conduct that forbids ISPs doing this.

• For those who were offered compensation less than £400 (often around £200)

This is probably because the ISP is using the wrong dates. Often the 7th to 31st Of October. They should be using the 3rd of October to 18th November. Allowing for excluded days this works out as 41 days * £9.98 =  £409.18.

The correct Start date:

We have now managed to get Openreach to confirm that broadband went down when power was lost on the 3rd of October.

“When power was restored on 7th October, it was then discovered that the subsea cable was impacted which effected full fibre customers. “

It was at this point that Openreach issued an area fault to all ISPs. This is why some ISPs wrongly use the 7th of October, when they should be using the 3rd.

The correct Fix Date

Some ISPs are using the 31st of October as a fix date. This was the date that Openreach gave an update. The fix was not till the 18th of November (just before the Scotland/Denmark game). BT emergency team have now acknowledged this via Jenni Minto’s team:

“BT advise that the repair successfully concluded on 18 November 2025 and that internet service providers will have been made aware of that. On that basis I would expect that 18 November is the date that would be used to determine the level of compensation due.”

ISPs avoiding payment of automatic compensation

Some islanders have been told that no compensation is due because it was out with the ISP’s  control. However, section 40 of Ofcom’s industry-code-of-practice-for-automatic-compensation states that ISPs cannot avoid compensation by saying it was not their fault.

“40. Subject to the exceptions in paragraph 39 above, the Communications Provider does not
avoid payment of automatic compensation if the issue was caused by an event outside of
the customer’s or its own control This type of event would include (but would not be limited
to) extreme weather, strikes and third-party acts.”

The document can be found here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/consultations/uncategorised/98684—automatic-compensation/associated-documents/industry-code-of-practice-for-automatic-compensation-2024-v1.pdf?v=392135

If ISPs claim the are not liable, direct them to the above document.

Meanwhile we are trying to get the ISPs to sort this out automatically as is their duty. Progress is slow.