One telephone call or 8000 inconvenienced customers?
Filed under: consumer, Dial Before You Dig, networks, Next G™
Last week a third party accidentally cut some fibre optic cables on the side of High St, Preston Victoria. At the time, I was at our contact centre in Townsville and listened to our agents taking calls from disappointed customers.
We know the third party involved didn’t mean to cut cables but the result was staggering. In all the cut took 20 Next G® base stations, nearly 7000 internet services and nearly 1000 phone lines off the air. It also took down the transmission that is needed to make ATM machines work, and provides the local police station and hospital with access to their data such as criminal and patient records.
By our estimation at least 8000 people were inconvenienced by this cable cut. While we had crews onsite within an hour of the cable cut occurring, and they worked non-stop through the night, it still took over 24 hours for us to get each and every customer’s services back up and running.
What is really disappointing for me about this type of cable cut is that the majority of the time they are preventable. Telstra is a member of the Dial Before You Dig service. For a freecall (charges apply for ringing from a mobile) anyone can request plans of underground services in an area that they need to undertake some excavation or digging. Alternately, you can request plans via Dial Before You Dig website.
I would encourage anyone who is thinking about undertaking digging or excavation work to make sure they contact Dial Before You Dig in the week before they need to do this work . By making one phone call, or spending a few minutes filling out a webform, you could save your entire neighbourhood from being inconvenienced.
Useful links:
- HOW TO: Dial Before You Dig
- Dial Before You Dig on Twitter
- Dial Before You Dig on Facebook
- Dial Before You Dig YouTube Channel
- Dial Before You Dig Website
Last year I cut through a Telstra cable on my property and managed to black out the business next door. I was simply planting a small shrub in my garden. The Telstra installation was 10 cm from the surface in an unprotected and deteriorated plastic conduit. Surely this is not adequately deep? Telstra of course charged me for damaging their installation. The point I make is that telecoms need to be properly installed and protected.
The comment I hear quite often from contractors is that it is far easier to cut the cable and have Telstra respond than it is to deal with Dial Before You Dig. I have also dealt with several contractors who would rather dispute the fees forever and a day regarding our repair work than inconvenience their own processes to follow the Dial Before You Dig process.
What we need is a way to make the contractors wear the brunt of the complaints but having the ability to provide details of the contractor to the public who wish to complain or lodge loss of business complaints.
Hi Brooke,
It’s disappointing to hear that some contractors are dismissive of Dial Before You Dig and our free easy to use service.
The Dial Before You Dig process has never been simpler, with our on-line service available 24/7 via our website (www.1100.com.au) to compliment our long existing 1100 phone number getting plans out within 2 business days.
In addition to this Dial Before You Dig promotes safe digging practices to ensure no one is ever hurt or injured. Lets hope these renegade contractors wise up before its too late.
Phil,
Is there anything in the market place to supplement ‘Dial Before You Dig’, in the lines of a like a current ‘Detector’ type instrument that contractors can use prior to and while digging to ensure that they don’t do damage?
I was thinking something like we currently have like Stud finders, Metal detectors etc etc? Just a thought.
Regards Tony Del Vecchio
Many of these sorts of optical lines don’t have current (or almost no current) and not much metal to detect. Thus they are very hard to detect by a sensing device .
How come one fibre cut can take down 8000 services? I thought there was redundancy built into the network.
Does Telstra compensate customers impacted by this ?
Some businesses have service level agreements (SLA) which can provide compensation. Consumers have a fully discounted plan pricing which does allow for compensation. You are welcome to take legal action against the contractor. Not sure if you could use VCAT for that, but you need to show lost profit or costs incurred to even have a chance of making a case.
Great article and thank you to Phill Sporton for helping spread the DBYD message.
We’d prefer to title the article “One on-line enquiry or 8000 inconvenienced customers” as just like the Telstra 24×7 service, if you do your enquiry on-line with DBYD you can do it 24×7 (a phone call works just as well however).
Great work Phil and thanks for giving Dial Before You Dig a heads up.
Very good advice to plan before breaking ground. However it is far from this easy to avoid underground plant. The records provided are often misleading and sometimes show plant on the opposite side of the road to where they actually are…I would therefore disagree with the comment that these incidences are preventable “the majority of the time.”
do you know if they had DBYD plans onsite or not?
Have they thought to maybe make it mandatory to dial? Maybe even apply fines for not doing so. The ad campaign shouldn’t be so friendly. It should be “you cut the cables, we’ll send you a fine”.
Not that I plan on doing either, but I sure feel inconviniencing 8000 people and being copped a $200 fine is right, then to illegally park my car, and affect maybe 10 people, and pay about the same.
Telstra does charge for the repairs….. hope the guy had insurance, that bill will be in the tens of thousands lol!
Interesting story. Scary how one cut can leave an entire suburb without comms though. You don’t want to be a subby digging one of these babys up. Lets face it, the technology is far greater, but so are the consequences when things turn bad.
What a pity that fibre is nearly always un-detectable. And the NBN lead in’s are a huge worry to us ( fencing contractors) only buried 300mm and no way to detect them?? It is not a case of IF we dig one up but WHEN.
i hope this bloke jumped straight on a plane, cut copper and you’ll cop a fine, cutting optical fibre that feeds exchanges! Your stuffed! I’d hate to see how much they were fined
IS there a fine for cutting optical fibre?