All the trouble started around 10:45 on the 18th when a contractor working for the NBNCo managed to dig trough the phone cable about 200m down the road. So the obvious was immediate loss of DSL connection which also left me without a telephone. A quick call to my ISP (Internode) revealed that they had lost the signal to the line I’m on at about 200m short of my house! So I went for a stroll down the road to see if there was any obvious signs as to what had happened. When I rounded the corner there was an excavator on the back of a truck leaving the scene and a guy standing in the trench that had just been opened not looking too pleased. Here’s a picture of the damaged phone cable…
Later in the day the site looked like this…
Then the following day all was fixed and covered up…
So did I have a connection once the cable was rejoined? I did for about half an hour then all was lost 🙁 So I rang my ISP to see if they were aware of the cable being fixed and to try and get them to do another line test but the guy who took my call clearly wasn’t Mr Helpful as he just kept telling me that my service won’t be looked at until the 28th (February) At this point I was getting rather frustrated with him and when I asked what my options are for getting either an alternate access or a credit for downtime he stated that I didn’t qualify for either and reminded me about the 28th (I was going in circles) so the conversation ended.
Skip forward to the 28th… I was of the opinion that this was to be the day that I’d get my phone/internet restored. Well no it wasn’t! I contacted my ISP around 1:30pm to get an update on how things were going to get a rather rude shock to be told that there wasn’t a job in the system for the checking/repair of my line. Now this is when I did my best not to become abusive! But I certainly got the point across of dissatisfaction because of being disconnected for a week and a half and the guy on the support line was doing all he could to see why the appointment was either cancelled or never booked (my speculation) then checked to see if they had any loan equipment (3G modem) available but due to the recent bush fires in the south (Forcett, Dunalley & Tasman Peninsula) all there gear was out on loan. So this is where the job was booked in for the 7th of March!
Well after sending an email to a friend to advise that my APRS iGate & T2 server will be still out of action until then (7th March) I get a phone call from his son (just happens to be a Telstra Tech) asking me if my line was still down and said that it will be fixed tomorrow morning! I got a call around 10:30am the following day and it was the Telstra guy who repaired the cable asking me a few questions about the whole situation and then rang back about 20 minutes later with the answer to the problem and said it would be fixed within the hour! 🙂
So it turns out that on the day that the cable was repaired some other technicians were doing line tests and had picked my line to test as it was not a phone line with a dial tone (DSL only) and they didn’t reconnect the line back. So this was the reason why I lost my internet/phone about half hour after the street cable was repaired (over a week earlier) So my line was restored to its original setup and I was reconnected to my ISP’s DSLAM and hey presto… Internet access restored 🙂
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