THOUSANDS of homes and businesses could be spared future disruption courtesy of a new burglar alarm running through cables.

BT has installed Rabit - rapid assessment BT incident tracker - to monitor the BT network and detect when a disconnection has taken place.

And it has already began to thwart thieves.

Luke Beeson, general manager of BT Security, said: "BT's new burglar alarm on the network will make thieves think again."

See Tuesday's newspaper for the full story.