Publications
Partners
Johannesburg - Telkom has provided an update on cable damage that knocked out its services for over 1 000 customers in Cape Town’s Green Point and Sea Point areas.
This week, News24 received a question from a user regarding the fault, which first hit customers in June this year.
News24 user Bruce asked:
“Has anyone got news about the general service collapse in Sea Point / Green Point area, myself and many businesses in the area have been without phone lines or internet for over two months. Telkom has ceased responding to complaints. The situation is impossible and crippling for some businesses. How long will this go on for?”
Fin24, in turn, reached out to Telkom who said that repairs have been concluded and that customers who are still experiencing issues must contact the telecoms network for help.
Below is Telkom’s managing executive for group communications and public relations Jacqui O’Sullivan's response to Bruce’s question.
“The repairs have been concluded but we have subsequently experienced vandalism that created a few problems. However, we only have two faults actually reported in that area, at the moment,” O’Sullivan told Fin24.
Providing more detail on the fault, O’Sullivan told Fin24 about the following background regarding the problem:
“The fault in Green Point appears to have developed towards the end of June when a number of underground network cables were damaged by what we believe was ill-planned construction work. The damage was extensive and resulted in more than 1 000 Telkom customers, including residents and businesses in the area, experiencing service disruption to voice and data lines.
“The infrastructure and cables were damaged during the rainy season so, in addition to the initial damage caused, rain seeped into the old copper cables and progressively caused more faults down the line. Multiple underground network cables needed replacing along with accompanying access infrastructure.
“The extent of the damage meant that over 2 500 metres of varying grades of copper cabling has to be replaced. Prior to re-installing and connecting the damaged cable, Telkom's contractors had to trench and replace underground pipes that have also been damaged over a distance of 1.2km. As you know, this is a densely populated area which requires that we perform substantial and careful navigation around infrastructure that provides for other services, like water and electricity that are provided by other utility companies. These complexities, combined with the recent rainy weather, has delayed the repair process.
“To try and minimise the impact of the service disruption to affected customers, we diverted about 25%, of the 388 customers that initially reported their services unavailable, to an alternate cable route. While we awaited permission from the relevant local authorities to complete the work on the damaged cable routes we also attempted, wherever possible, to assist customers in the by diverting to spare capacity on other cables. The technical managers overseeing this repair estimate that complete engineering work, full cable re-installation and full service restoration would be achieved by 3 August 2015. However, many customers' services were progressively restored ahead of 3 August, as the new cables were re-connected.
“We issued bulk SMSs to affected customers to keep them informed of our progress but unfortunately, these were only started in mid-July. We have subsequently reviewed our processes to ensure the system works as it has in the past, whereby the networks team alert the customer service team to bulk outages, to ensure the team can keep customers up to date.
“We are also meeting with the local municipality, as we have done in the past, to ensure that Telkom is notified of work by other parties which may affect our network infrastructure. This sort of major disruption can be avoided if developers and other servicing companies follow the necessary work protocols. At this point, we can't even identify which company caused the mess, by digging in the wrong place.
“This was a significant fault that left many customers without voice and data service for up to five weeks. We have apologised to the customers and our billing team is working to ensure those customers are credited for the period they were without service."
