IT?S good to talk ? but not when you live in Northlew. That?s the complaint from villagers who say the unreliable telephone service provided by BT is failing their rural community.

Northlew businessman Ian Richards said the small rural community has endured a winter of communication breakdowns and had been treated ?appallingly? by telecommunications giant BT.

The firm said work to replace defective cables took place this week.

But Mr Richards said the telephone system for the village is now ?totally outdated and oversubscribed? and the level of faults and poor quality of service have reached an ?unacceptable? level.

Mr Richards, who runs a sports betting website from his home, said: ?BT is spending millions of pounds on advertising and new technology, but cannot provide a decent level of service to a small community where good communications are vital to everyday life.

?We are not asking for the latest broadband technology ? simply a phone service we can trust.?

Mr Richards said he had been disconnected for several days over the Christmas period, with the line going dead while he was talking to his mother on Christmas Day.

Although BT have offered to divert calls to mobiles Mr Richards said this failed to solve the problem as, due to the isolated nature of the village, mobile network coverage was often only available when standing in a field behind the house.

Dennis and Liz Short from Northlew have also encountered repeated problems with their telephone service.

The elderly couple, who live in a remote farmhouse, have had their line on and off seven times in the last three months.

Mrs Short said their phone line was now working again after an engineer had laid a new section of cable last week.

But she felt it was ?very much fingers crossed? whether the problem had been resolved for good.

The couple were originally told by BT the problem could be a faulty phone, despite the many other cases of problems in the village.

Northlew and Ashbury Primary School has had its internet and e-mail service disconnected eleven times during the autumn term.

Headteacher Nicola Lampe said: ?It did cause disruption to the school?s administration. Thankfully it hasn?t really affected the children.?

Mrs Lampe said each time a fault was reported, engineers had come out to the small school to fix the line, but the problems would re-occur not long after.

She said no-one seemed to know exactly what the cause of the problems were, but one theory was that the disconnections happened because the telephone exchange at Halwill Junction was so far away.

Mr Richards has compiled a litany of complaints about the service BT provides to villagers in Northlew. Among the other problems were:

l A mail order shoe business cut off for one week in the busy run up to Christmas.

l A local farmer and digger hire firm who, because of a crossed line, could not receive incoming calls for nine weeks.

l Two customers who paid to have new lines put in for using the internet ? the line quality was so poor they ended up taking them out.

Mr Richards said engineers had admitted there was a major problem and that new cabling needed to be installed. However, as Northlew is so far from the nearest exchange at Halwill Junction, this could prove prohibitively expensive at a cost of as much as £250,000.

?As an isolated parish of approximately 200 homes, we have no choice but to choose BT as our telephone service provider,? said Mr Richards.

Jason Mann, a spokesman for BT said: ?We apologise to customers in Northlew who may have encountered problems.?

He said some improvement works had already been carried out to 150 metres of cable in the Northlew area.

?Our continuing investigations have identified two joints in the cabling which are susceptible to water.

?Arrangements for the joints to be replaced have been made and we will be monitoring the situation,? he added.