If you’re a Telstra customer in the Maitland or Hunter Valley regions of New South Wales, and you’re reading this right now, chances are you’re doing so via mobile, as vandals have damaged a major fibre cable supplying communication services to the area.
ITNews reports on the outage, which affects 19,000 local phone services, 8000 ADSL service and a small number of mobile towers. An unnamed Telstra spokesperson puts the cable damage down to “vandals”, telling ITNews that
“Initial investigations indicate the fibre appears to have been deliberately cut. This will be the subject of further investigation but our current priority is restoration of services. Our crews have been on site assessing the damage and planning repairs and with rejoining of the fibres now underway services will restore with each repaired fibre over the next few hours.”
According to a tweet from the @VoxofTLS account, repairs are indeed underway:
Maitland fibre cut update: 12 fibres fixed, 88 to go. Progressive restorations underway. Should be finished by lunchtime.
An update at 12:00
Maitland fibre cut update for Noon. All fibres repaired and we are checking all services are working again.
[ITNews]