A BUSINESSWOMAN claims her company is suffering as she has been left without a working phone line or internet for nearly a week.

Jackie Burns, who opened Estuary Underwriting, in London Road, Hadleigh, in October, is worried she could be losing valuable trade as she has been unable to make or receive phone calls or e-mails since last Friday. The fault was reported to BT and 23 people in the area are affected.

Ms Burns said: “I’m a fledging business at a key stage where we are starting to build a name for ourselves and people knowwhere we are.

“It just doesn’t look good for us we cannot be contacted and we’re blaming BT, but it’s genuinely not our fault.”

A BT spokesman said it was working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

The spokesman said: “We had faults first reported on January 24 which were traced to a problem at the local street cabinet.

“Engineers have been working on this and we have had 23 faults reported from people affected as part of this and this is now down to 11.

“We are doing all we can to get this completed as quickly as possible and are hoping that during today all will be back in service.”