A shocked Reg reader was told by a BT engineer his girlfriend was having problems with her phone because spiders had eaten through the line.

An OpenReach techie was called out to the Manchester suburb of Chorlton on Monday after problems with voice calls. According to our correspondent, after a quick shimmy up the offending telegraph pole he calmly reported spiders had chewed through the line.

Our correspondent was understandably puzzled, noting the ADSL connection he had arranged two weeks previously was functioning fine.

The problem was fixed and the engineer went on his way, leaving we at Vulture Central losing sleep over whether spiders are indeed seeking to bring the technological world sobbing to its knees. We contacted BT to ask whether arachnid attacks are becoming a bigger problem in Britain's telecoms infrastructure.

A spokesman said someone had the wrong end of the stick, and the engineer had just said there were spiders living in the pole top box, and the line had corroded, rather than being munched. Our correspondent assures us the engineer did say the spiders had eaten the wire.

Conspiracy theorists are claiming BT would deny the problem, and are linking the spiders' attack to the recent case of mysterious green goo which put the wind up BT engineers in Aldershot.®