Phone drama fix expected

14th May 2009

Sunshine Coast Daily

TELEPHONE communications in Allora were expected to be back to normal this morning after Ergon Energy workers accidentally cut a main Telstra cable into the town on Monday morning.

Telstra regional general manager Nigel Beaman said yesterday the mishap required the replacement of a 1.25km section of cable, with a repair crew due to complete the work last night.

“If a cable is cut straight through it can be a relatively simple job to fix, but when you have more of a twist or grab action happening, as was the case in Allora, you have stretching involved and it's a much larger repair job,” Mr Beaman said.

“We have to dig quite a distance on either side of the break and then splice fibres together, so there is always a time delay with getting services back on line.

“Typically priority is given to emergency services and facilities such as nursing homes and then everyone else gradually has service returned.”

Mr Beaman said the cable drama had cut all 'landline' phone communications in Allora and mobile coverage in some areas had also been interrupted.

“This break involved some of the fibres running to the main mobile tower serving Allora,” he said.

“Some customers, for example in the Bony Mountain and Talgai areas would have had patchy reception, while others had nothing.”

Mr Beaman said “set procedures” for recovering costs were in place for when service providers such as Ergon Energy and Telstra damaged each other's cables.

A spokesman for Ergon Energy said the cable had been damaged at around 11.30am on Monday in Bennett Street.

“Crews were replacing an old low-voltage service pole,” he said.

“The old pole was pulled out of ground, a borer was then used to clean out the existing hole. When the crew pulled up the borer, they noticed they had damaged telecommunications cables.

“The crews had carried out the proper checks on the location of the cables before digging.”

Do you have a comment on the outage? Call us on 4660 1310.