Dead batteries in a roadside telephone cabinet mean more than 200 customers keep losing their internet connections.

Engineers from Openreach are trying to resolve the fault which is leading to broadband drop-outs in Sittingbourne.

One furious resident, who works from home and uses BT, said: "We've been having problems with our broadband for the past week. It flicks off for anything up to three-quarters-of-an-hour.

"Yesterday, I discovered many of our neighbours are in the same boat but we all have different providers."

She said an engineer visited her home in Bluebell Drive on the Eden Village estate to check her wifi hub and discovered there was a "major service outage" on that side of the town.

She was told the fault was in one of the green roadside cabinets which connect homes to the telephone exchange.

She said: "I understand they can't get essential parts so the cabinets are having to be powered by an old-fashioned battery. When the battery dies, we lose our internet connection until someone goes round to replace the battery. It must be affecting hundreds of homes in the area."

She added: "We have been told the fault can't be repaired until the end of the month so it looks like we will be stuck like this for weeks. It's ridiculous."

An Openreach spokeswoman said, “Our cabinet in Sittingbourne is being affected by a problem with its electricity supply which is impacting around 250 customers on our network.

"While we make repairs, we’ve had to switch off the mains power. The cabinet is now on battery power."

She added: "The batteries need to be switched over manually so there may be times of the day when customers briefly lose their connectivity. But we’re working to get a permanent repair as quickly as possible.”

BT, TalkTalk and Sky are among the 690 companies who use the Openreach cables.