Angry residents are still waiting to be connected to the outside world - ten days after their telephones went dead.

BT customers in Elm Drive, Hove, are hanging on for engineers to repair a faulty cable, which is affecting up to 150 homes.

For most it is a frustrating inconvenience, which is making it difficult to contact family and friends.

For others the implications of living without a telephone are more serious.

Pensioner William Saunders uses a 24-hour telephone Care Link service, which alerts doctors when a button hung round his neck is pressed.

Wife Joan, 82, said they had the service installed a month ago for peace of mind and because they wanted to rely less on their neighbours.

She said: "Bill often has funny turns in the middle of the night and I wanted to feel as though I could get help without waking up the neighbours.

"Now I am in a worse situation than before because I do not even have a telephone. I have called BT on numerous occasions and it said I was on priority but so far nothing has happened."

Mr Saunders said: "The amount of time they are taking is ridiculous. When all this is finally sorted we are going straight over to NTL. We cannot have all this worry."

Neighbour Denise Satchall, 37, is a translator who works from home and needs her telephone for work.

She is losing business even though BT has agreed to divert incoming calls to her mobile.

She said: "They think they are doing me an enormous favour but I still cannot make outgoing calls on my telephone. My mobile is 60p per minute and would cost me a fortune.

"I cannot use the internet either. Surely it should not take this long to reconnect us."

A BT spokesman apologised and said: "It has taken a number of different people to find the fault but it has been located now, at the junction of Elm Drive and Hangleton Road, and work has started to solve it and get everybody reconnected."