The following report of this has been issued as follows:
Phone services in Manchester and parts of the North West have been disrupted following a suspected arson attack.
Police were called to two incidents in the early hours of this morning. In one incident in Salford, a fire started in a wheelie bin near a cable box damaged underground cables. Shortly afterwards, police attended a similar incident nearby, following reports of another fire.
In a third incident a control box for traffic lights had been set on fire causing the lights to malfunction.
Both BT and business-focussed telco, Your Communications (formerly Norweb Communications) have been hit by the fires. Other operators are also understood to have been affected.
Gary Clarkson, operations manager for Your Communications , described the fires as a "serious incident" and said engineers were working to fix the damaged cables. According to one unconfirmed report the fires may have been started deliberately as part of a malicious attack against a telco.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident.
Clarets Mad will be back up to date later today with news of our game at Ipswich.