A shop owner has slammed telecoms companies after being left without broadband and a working phone line for almost a month despite promises the problem would be fixed within a couple of days.

Andrew Shepherd, of St Aubyn's Road in Lowestoft, said his street along with St Peter's Road, Carlton Road, Lorne Road, and Richmond Place had all been left without any service, with more believed to be affected.

Mr Shepherd, who runs Parrs in London Road South, said his home phone line had initially stopped working on Wednesday, May 30, before engineers said the problem would be fixed within two days on Thursday, May 31.

On Monday, July 4, the repair work was pushed further back with Mr Shepherd told it would not be solved until the end of the week, before it was once again delayed at the end of that week to the end of the following.

With nearly four weeks gone since the initial problem started, Mr Shepherd and surrounding houses and businesses are still without a working phone line or broadband service.

He said: 'It is a disgrace. One can understand things being down for a day. Two days becomes unacceptable. A week is intolerable and is not allowed.

'It took them eight or nine days to look at it and discover it was a cable fault. Why did it take so long?'

He added: 'It is an utter disgrace in this modern age. What are they doing? They could have laid a new cable between London and Lowestoft in that time.'

Mr Shepherd said the outage had affected residents and businesses who use a range of different phone and broadband providers and is not just hitting customers of one provider.

A spokesman for Openreach, the company which owns and maintains the telephone wires, said: 'A faulty underground cable has affected service in some areas of Lowestoft.

'The repair work is complex and time consuming, and engineers have now completed the repair of underground ductwork.

'We're sorry for the inconvenience, however engineers are working as quickly as they can to replace 55 metres of underground cabling and to complete the work as quickly as possible.'