Intermittent and sometimes non-existent internet and landline connections are frustrating residents in a remote village near Dalston.

Over the last three months, at any one time about half a dozen residents in Stockdalewath have experienced problems with their internet and landlines.

As the village has sparse mobile phone coverage, being without consistent wifi or a landline connection is even more frustrating and isolating for residents.

Georgina Ternent, who lives in the village, said she had been forced to use her neighbour’s internet at times because hers was not working.

She said of good WiFi connections: “It’s crucial. It’s part of how we live our lives.”

She has complained to BT about the problem but has been disappointed by their responses.

“It’s been an ongoing saga, to the extent that my husband actually drove around the village every time BT said there’s an engineer working on it,” Mrs Ternant admitted.

“He got in his car and went to look for said engineer. Sometimes it was true, sometimes it wasn’t.”

Another householder has been reporting problems since May – and has even had a new phone line installed. This worked for a short time, but failed again earlier this week, once again knocking out the telephone line and causing intermittent broadband connection problems.

A spokeswoman for BT said: “We are very sorry to hear that a small number of customers in Stockdalewath are experiencing issue with their phone service. The two customers highlighted to us both reported faults in the last two weeks.

“Investigations suggest the fault is located underground and engineers are in the process of arranging a dig so further investigations can take place. We will work to restore full service as quickly as possible.”

This week telecoms regulator Ofcom ordered BT to give more independence and investment powers to its Openreach broadband division, which owns the fibre and copper wires that run from local telephone exchange to homes and businesses.

Ofcom stopped short of telling BT to sell Openreach, but said it should be run as a legally-separate company within BT Group with its own board, an independent chairman and its own brand.

There were concerns raised that Openreach has lacked investment and provides a poor quality service to million of homes across the UK.

Across Cumbria there are many homes and businesses still waiting for superfast fibre broadband to be installed.

BT Openreach has been installing superfast fibre broadband in Stockdalewath and residents thought the installation could be the reason for the internet and landline troubles.

Mrs Ternent therefore thought the inconvenience they have been suffering would be worthwhile when they got high speed internet.

However, a map on Connecting Cumbria’s website shows most of the village will only get basic fibre broadband instead of superfast.

Mrs Ternent said this was crazy as all the wiring is running right past their homes.

She is now encouraging people in the local area to register their interest in Superfast broadband online with Connecting Cumbria so that in the future they too might get high speed internet.

Cumbria was promised more than £2m worth of funding to improve the speed of broadband as part of the Connecting Cumbria project last year.

A spokeswoman for BT Openreach said: “We are working on a structure currently, within Stockdalewath village, which is expected to allow the majority of properties in the village to be able to access superfast fibre broadband services.

“Completion of this structure is subject to agreement of a wayleave for the provision of electrical power supply to the structure that we are currently negotiating with a local resident.

“Once agreed locally, we can then proceed with the final testing and commissioning to offer services.”

She added: “The work we are doing on this structure should have no effect on the residents current telecom services as deployment of fibre services does not impact on existing network structures.”