Unexpected encounters in the field: Part 3
Filed under: community, customers, infrastructure, remote, wildlife
Here I am with more unexpected encounters from Telstra’s field team and this one has a bit of mystery surrounding it.
The Kimberley Cougar strikes again
Telstra field crews live and work in communities right across this great brown, and at times, very wet land.
Being able to make contact with others is very important to everyone, but is especially important to those who call the rural and remote areas of our country home.
Even in a community as large as the Kimberley, being a field technician based in that region basically means you know or have met nearly everyone, at one time or another.
So when fibre or telecommunications infrastructure is damaged, it’s all hands on deck, because no one is untouched by the loss of service and it can become dire in the wet season when communities can become isolated.
Doing all they can to ensure our customers are connected is what our field Service Delivery crews are about.
During the 2010/11 wet season parts of the Kimberley experienced floods of up to 1.5 metres. At this time Telstra’s communication technicians demonstrated a great personal commitment to restoring services in adverse and extreme conditions.
For instance, due to cable damage at the time14.5 kilometres of temporary fibre needed to be walked out through the flood water with the aid of local contractors, Main Roads, Broome Police and the Fire & Emergency Services Authority (FESA), with the team requiring cable trucks, 4WDs, the FESA chopper and a couple of boats on standby to assist in restoring service outages.
The cable damage, photograph here by the Broome field crew, is still a bit of a mystery. Suggested culprits have ranged from trees uprooting and taking out part of the temporary fibre, vehicles, wash outs and fast flowing floodwaters damaging the fibre.
The Broome team also have some animal suspects with crocodiles floating down the river, cockatoos, and a lot of livestock about at the time also. However, due to the strange reoccurring nibbles on the cable, the Broome team’s prime suspect is the Kimberly cougar!
They reckon the legend of the ‘cougar’ is right up there with the Loch Ness Monster, Nullarbor Nymph and the Abominable Snowman.
Can you help solve the mystery?
Check out the previous blogs in this series:
I think the problem is the grounding. The consequences of poor grounding are significant because ground is a reference for logic in any electronic device. This means that any irregularity in the ground can directly affect performance of the logic at the chip level.
Hi,
I love reading these articles and the pictures are awesome! The only thing is that the pictures are so small! Could you upload the original images in the next episode so we can see the action in full-size?
Thanks!