Cyclone Yasi Update No 5
Filed under: assistance, customers, cyclone yasi, disaster, floods, natural disaster
Over the past 24 hours, more than 14,000 landline services have been reconnected with the further restoration of mains power. (44,000 reduced to 30,000)
In addition, another 6 mobile phone towers have been restored, with 50 more to go. Our mobile network is generally operating well, as impacted sites often have overlapping coverage.
Latest restorations
Mobile services have been restored at: Longslands Gap, Alice River, Mount Saunders, Seven Sisters, Karumba, Nelly Bay, Manunda, Daintree, Kinduro, Mt Myrtle, and Deep Gorge.
Landline services have been restored at: Palm Island, Wangan, Malanda, Bluewater, Yungaburra, and Ingham. While restoring network sites in these areas has brought a large number of landline services back into operation, some customers may still have faults where the equipment in or around their home or business has been damaged.
Work is underway to restore power to the Feluga exchange today after it was blown off its foundations by Cyclone Yasi. Crews are also repairing and repowering network sites in Mission Beach and the Cassowary district to get landline and broadband services connected as quickly as possible.
190 network sites remain without mains power. We have increased the number of priority sites being supported by generators to more than 90. When mains power has been returned, we will be moving generators to other key sites including Snakes Creek, Veenee, Hot Springs, and Lynd River.
We have announced an assistance package for our residential and small business customers in the region. The package provides practical assistance with phone services including: free call diversions, home line call rates from one mobile phones per house, a $50 credit for mobile customers who do not have a fixed line, and the holding of customer phone numbers and email addresses.
We remind customers that there are still a significant number of individual service faults to be repaired across the region, but we have a very large workforce on the ground, which will increase over the coming days, to get more customers reconnected. We ask our customers to be patient during this time.
To report a fault
• Residential: 13 22 03
• Telstra Business customers: 13 29 99
• Telstra Enterprise and Government customers: 1800 730 062
Telstra Stores
All Telstra Stores in the region are now open for trade.
Free calls from payphones
We have payphones which have have been switched to free local and STD calls for people without telecommunications to connect to their family and friends at the following locations:
- Smithfield – McGregor Road – James Cook University sus Shelter
- Trinity Beach – Trinity Beach Road – near Rabaul Street
- Mossman – Front Street – at Post Office
- Woree – Jasper Street – near Toogood Road
- Earlville – Mulgrave Road – Stocklands
- Babinda – Munro Street – outside Post Office
- Ingham – Townsville Road – Near Ingham Exchange
- Innisfail – Rankin Street – outside Telstra Exchange
- Innisfail – Edith Street
- Innisfail – Fitzgerald Esp – outside Hospital
- Innisfail – Fitzgerald Esp – opposite RSL
- Tully – Bryant Street
- Tully – Butler Street – outside 5 Star Store
- Ravenshoe – Grigg Street
- Silkwood – Japoon Road – opposite the Post Office
- Silkwood East – Bruce Highway – Corner of Silkwood Road
Payphones do require a supply of mains electricity, so operation of payphones will be subject to availability of mains power in the relevant area.
I am writing from London, England. I have been desperate to contact my parents, who live at Gordonvale. A few days ago, their line was definitely not connected. Now it rings, but nobody answers. Would it be possible for their phone to be ringing at my end, but not theirs?
I am quite worried.
I live outside Gordonvale – we only caught the edge of the cyclone there is little structural damage in this area. Phone lines at my place came back Sunday evening. I hope this reassures you a little and telstra can tell you if it is working or not.
I’m also trying to call family in the affected area (Toomulla in my case) from the UK. Telstra it would be really helpful if you were to publish where the remaining outages are, where you are prioritising restoration crews and what your best guess at restoration times are. I’d also suggest that you provide an email address or web page for customers to report line failures rather than just a phone number on your website for obvious reasons.
Thanks everybody for the reassurances and information! Thankfully, my parents’ phone was back on Sunday evening as well, and so they were able to send me an email.
We live in Redlynch Valley in Cairns and we have broadband since the power came back on on Saturday afternoon but now phone line at all?? We have the same if friends try and ring us, they only hear the phone ring but nothing happens on our side. If we pick up the phone the line is just dead, no dial tone. I don’t understand how we can have broadband if the phoneline is dead?? Has the lines been put back on in our area yet or not?
Deidre,
have your lines checked I had intermittent phone, I had to use a friend landline phone, as it appeared mine was not working, I could not get adsl either, I rang telstra after buying a new phone(Ihad no problem with phone then) and I ended up having to buy new modem as well! appears they were blown up!
I arrived home from work today – to find I now have Power and with this a Landline – thankyou. There are others living around me who still do not have either … keep up the good work – this disaster has had a huge effect on my community, family and friends.