Townsville City Council admits to digging up Telstra cable on Magnetic Island

Townsville City Council has confessed it was their team that dug up a Telstra cable on Magnetic Island, cutting internet and kicking off a firestorm of anger. Here’s what happened.

Pilgrim Sailing was one of many island businesses severely effected by the Telstra outage across the first half of the school holidays. Pic: Pilgrim Sailing.

Townsville City Council has admitted it was them who dug up a Telstra cable on Magnetic Island, plunging some residents into the dark ages and kicking off a firestorm of anger towards the telco.

A council spokesperson said team members hit a Telstra cable while responding to an after-hours water leak on the corner of Shaw and Grace streets at Nelly Bay in late August.

“Council has followed Telstra’s process for reporting damaged cables and is continuing to remain in contact with Telstra regarding the issue,” the spokesperson said.

One resident reported council cut through the Telstra cable while responding to a burst water main on August 29, around 5pm.

Several Nelly Bay residents reported losing internet service to their homes on August 29-30.

Initially, Telstra told the Townsville Bulletin that “vandals” had dug up the cable, and only a “few residents” were affected.

A picture taken by a resident of the damaged Telstra cable next to a water line council was trying to access

The situation then became even worse when Telstra’s 4G service collapsed on the island just days before the Queensland school holidays began.

Residents frustrated with Telstra’s customer service flocked to a newly-created Facebook page ‘Telstra Magnetic Island residents are fed up’, which now has over 300 members, and shared their experiences.

Mobile services on Maggie were fixed on Tuesday, September 17, according to Telstra – making it a seven-day 4G outage.

“We know it was a longer wait than expected, and we thank everyone for their patience. The fix was complex, and our technicians were onsite every day working to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible,” a Telstra spokesperson said.

While the technicians were working “every day”, locals who reached out to Telstra during this period were being told by customer service staff “there was no outage” in the area so the problem had to be their phones, and were being asking to turn their devices off and on again, check their SIM cards, and more basic troubleshooting.

“We’re aware that meant customers didn’t get the best experience when contacting us, and we apologise for the frustration this caused,” the Telstra spokesperson explained.

“Unfortunately, a glitch in our system prevented the Telstra outages page from being updated properly.”

In regards to the landline and internet service cut off by the cable damage, Telstra said they’ve

“restored the majority” of affected services and are working quickly to restore the rest by September 20.

Magnetic Island’s brief journey into the dark ages garnered political attention, with Member for Herbert Phil Thompson writing to Communications Minister Michelle Rowland on September 16.

“The community’s attempts to seek assistance have been met with inadequate responses from Telstra,” Mr Thompson told the minister.

“Residents report lengthy wait times for customer service with little to no resolution or information provided.”

Member for Townsville Scott Stewart also had a swing, saying it was “really appalling” residents couldn’t get phone service or internet.

“To not have internet in this day and age is absolutely appalling,” Mr Stewart said.

“This is a great place to live, it’s a great place to visit, but we need the infrastructure, so I’ll be on the phone, I’ll be writing the emails to my counterparts at the federal level to ask why they are continuing to disregard this problem.”

Originally published as Townsville City Council admits to digging up Telstra cable on Magnetic Island