DETERIORATION in optic fibre cabling is being blamed for a three-day outage in internet and mobile phone services in Balranald last week.
Services dropped out late afternoon on Tuesday, with most services reportedly back on line by close of business on Friday.
The interruption caused serious headaches for business owners with EFTPOS machines down and limited ATM access.
Balranald Shire Council general manager Chris Littlemore told The Guardian that Telstra identified a pressure point in the cable out near Maude with deterioration discovered later.
“When they went to fix it they discovered a significant length of cable had deteriorated and when they went to repair [the deterioration] they realised they couldn’t just take it out because police and emergency services would have been down.
“It was a bigger problem than they initially thought.”
Mr Littlemore said the outage had made it difficult for the community to carry out day-to-day operations.
“There are so many services that we don’t realise rely on Internet and telephone services,” he said.
“The post office and banking services are reliant on internet.”
On Friday morning, Mr Littlemore said his mobile service appeared to be back online but Internet services were still down.
But while frustrated with the situation, Mr Littlemore stopped short of giving Telstra a serve.
“If Telstra needs to be criticised I’m happy to criticise them, but in this instance [there are] communications challenges with flooding on the east coast,” he said.
“If there were no challenges I’d probably be a lot more viniferous about the time it has taken them to fix it.”
Balranald club general manager Toni Dennis said “just about every business” in town had been affected.
She said the club’s TAB and keno facilities had also been affected.
“Even though it’s just a service, when you don’t have it available people don’t come in at all,” she said.
“It’s just a freak of nature, we’ve got to grin and bear it.”
The Guardian didn’t receive a response from Telstra for a request for comment on Friday.
