For 5 hours ‘NT’ meant ‘no telephone’

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 25 May 2008 13:13

IT Industry - Strategy

Australia’s Northern Territory suffered its first major mobile phone outage, after a fibre optic cable was mysteriously cut in Alice Springs. The unprecedented outage affecting tens of thousands of Telstra mobile customers for 5 hours on Saturday, 24th May 2008.

From 9.30am to 2.30pm, Australian Central Standard Time, Telstra customers in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) knew what it felt like to have no mobile telephone service thanks to a fibre optic cable being cut in mysterious circumstances.

The Northern Territory News (NTN) reported that twenty mobile base stations had been affected, covering tens of thousands of kilometres, from ‘Central Australia to the Top End’.

Telstra spokeswoman Jane De Gault spoke to NTN and explained that Telstra would investigate how the cable had been cut, although the priority was getting the service up and running again.

De Gault – no relation to John Galt who in a fictional world may have been responsible for the cable cut – told the NTN that the outage “had a very broad impact”, that it had taken crews some time to discover that a cut fibre optic cable was the reason behind the outage.

De Gault also explained to the NTN that "It's one of those things that does happen from time to time. There will be a full investigation, but it will not happen until full services are restored. That is a priority, especially for places such as Alice airport”.

According to Telstra, SMS messaging and mobile broadband Internet services were unaffected – only voice traffic was unavailable until an “emergency repair” had taken place by around 2pm, with the system fully restored by 4pm.

So, how might the cable have been cut, according to Telstra? Please read on to page 2.