For 5 hours ‘NT’ meant ‘no telephone’

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

IT Industry - Strategy

As for speculation on how the cable had been cut, De Gault told NTN that: "It may have been that there was a contractor, someone's contractor, has cut the cable and that's often the case.”

More details can be read at the original NTN story.

With mobile telephony now an accepted part of life, even in rural and regional parts of Australia, it’s certainly an unusual feeling when service gets cut and takes hours to be restored.

At least SMS and mobile broadband services remained in place, while regular landline services – and any competing mobile telephony networks – apparently remained completely unaffected.

Had the service been cut while the CDMA network was still active, many would have had a backup service to use if necessary, but currently the Next G network is the only major rural and regional game in town, offering coverage to 98.9% of populated Australia.

Consumers and businesses wanting an alternative rural and regional network will need to wait until the end of the year for Optus and Vodafone to complete their own 3.5G HSDPA voice and data network, with Optus promising population coverage of 98%, while Vodafone promises at least 96% population coverage.