Up to 3000 Telstra customers in Rutherford and Telarah have been left without landline and internet services after a contractor cut a major optical fibre cable on Sunday.
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Telstra Country Wide Hunter general manager Chris Cusack said the “major
outage” – caused by a third party contractor – affected between 2000 and 3000
customers and 13 mobile towers.
Mr Cusack told the Mercury last night that the majority of customers had their services restored by Sunday night.
But when some customers were still without services yesterday morning it was
discovered that a copper cable had also been damaged.
There were “traffic management issues” because of the proximity to the kerb on the New England Highway at Rutherford and repair work could not start until last night.
Permission was given for them to start repairs at 7pm last night and it was hoped they would be completed by this morning.
A spokeswoman for
Mai-Wel, which is based in Telarah, said the organisation was still without phone and internet at the close of
business yesterday.
The problem has came at a time when Telstra’s resources are already stretched by floods across large areas of NSW.
Mr Cusack apologised to customers for the inconvenience and stressed that it was important for contractors to use the 1100 Dial Before You Dig service to identify critical infrastructure before they started work.
