Monday, May 22, 2006
More on the Kempsey Cable Damage
This morning on ABC radio we heard that all of the fibre had been repaired but they still had a copper coaxial cable to rejoin. The mobile base stations were back on the air and Telstra estimated out of the possible 2000 plus lines around 1300 lines were back in service.
The owner of a local business in Kempsey was on the radio complaining that he still didn’t have telephone services. From the beginning of the interview he praised Telstra for their work and said it wasn’t their fault but a major issue with the town and juvenile crime. Kempsey has been in the news recently for its high crime rates and the local MP for the area Hon Andrew Stoner – leader of the Nationals in NSW has highlighted this.
The interview progressed to talking with Michael Sharpe from Telstra Country Wide and the radio presenter asked him a number of questions of interest. Mr Shape unfortunately didn’t know the fines and penalties related to intentional vandalism to communication assets. The question was asked about the Grafton call Centre “Was the Grafton call centre effected by this cable cut? Mr Sharpes response was very swift, a little gruff and startled “No! Not to my knowledge!!!!” The vandalism cut mobile and some long distance services between Kundabung and Tweedheads and also effected the ABC 2TR AM transmitter in Kempsey as the landline link between 2KP at Smithtown and the 2TR transmitter in Taree was running down the coaxial cable spoken about earlier.
According to user “Michael” in the usenet use group aus.comms this call centre was indeed effected. He posted “Grafton Call Centres (Telstra) unable to operate”. Telstra’s call control system would reroute calls if a particular call centre dropped out of the loop so I believe the impact to customers might have been minimal but the employees in Grafton would have been twiddling their thumbs possibly.
Telstra announced that today they will be placing the cabled under the ground via and underground bore. Telstra’s Michael Sharpe also suggested the damage to the cable in economic loss to Telstra could have run into the millions yesterday. The concerns of the economic losses to the businesses are yet to be really tallied and highlighted.
The owner of a local business in Kempsey was on the radio complaining that he still didn’t have telephone services. From the beginning of the interview he praised Telstra for their work and said it wasn’t their fault but a major issue with the town and juvenile crime. Kempsey has been in the news recently for its high crime rates and the local MP for the area Hon Andrew Stoner – leader of the Nationals in NSW has highlighted this.
The interview progressed to talking with Michael Sharpe from Telstra Country Wide and the radio presenter asked him a number of questions of interest. Mr Shape unfortunately didn’t know the fines and penalties related to intentional vandalism to communication assets. The question was asked about the Grafton call Centre “Was the Grafton call centre effected by this cable cut? Mr Sharpes response was very swift, a little gruff and startled “No! Not to my knowledge!!!!” The vandalism cut mobile and some long distance services between Kundabung and Tweedheads and also effected the ABC 2TR AM transmitter in Kempsey as the landline link between 2KP at Smithtown and the 2TR transmitter in Taree was running down the coaxial cable spoken about earlier.
According to user “Michael” in the usenet use group aus.comms this call centre was indeed effected. He posted “Grafton Call Centres (Telstra) unable to operate”. Telstra’s call control system would reroute calls if a particular call centre dropped out of the loop so I believe the impact to customers might have been minimal but the employees in Grafton would have been twiddling their thumbs possibly.
Telstra announced that today they will be placing the cabled under the ground via and underground bore. Telstra’s Michael Sharpe also suggested the damage to the cable in economic loss to Telstra could have run into the millions yesterday. The concerns of the economic losses to the businesses are yet to be really tallied and highlighted.
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 4:41 PM 
