Water damage cable causes internet, phone blackout in Summer Hill
A water damaged cable has caused landline phone and internet blackouts for 300 customers in Summer Hill and Ashfield, sending residents back to the pre-digital era for the past two week.
A water damaged cable has caused landline phone and internet blackouts for 300 customers in Summer Hill and Ashfield for almost two weeks.
Telstra expects services to be restored early next week, but some local residents have already been warned the outage could last a further 12 days.
Local residents and businesses are angered that the inner-city suburbs have been cut off from the rest of the world for so long.
Among those affected is Ellen Lloyd Shepherd who is concerned she would not be able to call an ambulance if her son Owen has an asthma attack.
Her internet and landline has been down since March 16 and her mobile phone gets very poor reception in her Summer Hill home.
“This is not about Netflix and Spotify,” she siad.
“If Owen had an asthma attack the nearest place I can get reception is Prospect St which is about 300m away so I would lose precious minutes in getting a fast response,” she said.
“I’m with iiNet and I had to get the doctor to fill out their forms to get him on a medical priority list for repairs.
“It was my understanding they would either repair my line or provide me with a temporary connection within 24 hours.”
Within half an hour of making a complaint to the ombudsman and speaking the Courier on Friday, March 29, iiNet had promised an interim dongle and phone service would be up and running that afternoon.
Ms Shepherd was also frustrated her children could not do their homework as it’s all on google classroom.
“The internet is an essential service in today’s society,” she said.
“Imagine if we were without electricity or water for two weeks.”
An iiNet spokesman confirmed: “We have reached out to the customer and provided an alternative method to connect to the internet”.
Ms Shepherd questioned why they couldn’t have done that two weeks away.
The blackout had also caused chaos at The Village Medical Practice in Summer Hill where they were diverting four phone lines to one of the doctor’s mobiles.
Frazzled reception staff were unable to call people to confirm appointments and were having to hand deliver pathology and radiology results.
In a good sign for the rest of the area, their system crackled back to life about 3.15pm on Friday, March 29.
Anna Ramsay has been significantly inconvenienced as she runs her own business from home.
Her son Hamish, 8, had to miss this week’s session for a multi-lit course he does online, which costs taxpayers about $2000 over ten weeks.
“There’s no replacement lesson so that’s just lost,” she said.
“Telstra said they think it will be fixed by April 3 but it’s just unacceptable for a whole inner Sydney suburb to be without internet for more than a week.
“Our daily lives grind to a halt because everything is done online.
“It’s not like I’m complaining because I can’t watch Netflix — we all rely on the internet now for our day-to-day lives.”
She is also one of the managers for the Petersham Junior Rugby Club and is trying to help organise a fair for St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School.
A Telstra spokesman said technicians are undertaking repairs to a water damaged cable, which had impacted fixed line and internet services to approximately 300 customers.
“The issue was first reported to Telstra on March 18 and will involve the replacement of 135 metres of cable,” the spokesman said.
“Due to the extent of the works and the location, to minimise traffic disruption our crews are only able to undertake repairs at night.
“Telstra is working to replace the cable as quickly as possible and apologises for any inconvenience caused during this time.
“Telstra expects services to be progressively restored early next week.”
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