A potential rescue of the alternative network (altnet) broadband provider G.Network has been abandoned due to fears that the cables have been ravaged by rats.

G.Network entered administration earlier this month shortly after being acquired by private equity firm FitzWalter Capital, which specializes in distressed assets.

As such, FitzWalker is pushing to sell off G.Network’s fiber broadband network and its customer base.

However, one potential bidder has scuppered plans to acquire G.Network and its assets amid concerns that rats have feasted on much of the company’s fiber optic cables.

Community Fibre, another London-based altnet, told The Telegraph earlier this week that it won’t explore a bid for the assets due to the cost of repairing the damaged cables.

“Rodents like ducts and they like fibers which are very tasty,” Graeme Oxby, chief executive, Community Fibre, told The Telegraph.

“It’s not something we’ve been particularly interested in because we think it’s got quite a lot of structural issues and would be quite an expensive fix.”

According to the report, G.Network has laid much of its broadband cables in ducts located in the middle of busy London roads, as opposed to under pavements like its rivals have done. Because of this, the company has had to dig up roads to carry out repairs, which has been costly.

It means more uncertainty for G.Network, which entered administration with £300 million ($413m) of debts and around 25,000 customers. Founded in 2016, G.Network’s network spans some 420,000 homes in London.

It’s not uncommon for rats or other rodents to attack fiber cables, with the animals using the material to create nests.

In one instance last year, former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband blamed rats for causing a 10-day outage in Doncaster, UK. On other occasions, rodents were blamed for tucking into broadband cables in Hertfordshire back in 2023.

In 2021, mice were behind a Telstra outage in New South Wales, Australia, when the country was overrun with a plague of mice.

Elsewhere in Canada, a beaver brought the Internet down for 900 customers in British Columbia, Canada, when the large rodent chewed through a Telus fiber cable near a creek and used some of the materials for its dam.