Repairs to a Nextgen Network’s interstate optical fibre cable, severed during recent flooding in Queensland, have commenced and are expected to be completed within the next few days.
In an updated advisory notice to customers issued late Thursday, the fibre provider identified the break in a cable near Thagoona, south west of Brisbane.
“It appears that the dirt road turned into a river such that the wash eroded the surface to a depth that exposed the cable which was then damaged from floating debris,” the notice states.
No damage is believed to have been dealt to the fibre on either side of the initial fault.
Technicians will repair the cable from Friday, with hopes of “rapid service orientation”.
The wholesale fibre provider, which is more than halfway through the rollout of the Federal Government’s $250 million Regional Broadband Blackspot Program, moved affected customers onto an alternate link after it suffered the fibre outage, as well as a cut to one microwave service, on Tuesday.
While the alternate, geographically separate link has solved most issues for Nextgen customers, the provider initially warned that links and service would be unprotected until the first link was repaired.
The second operational link suffered an outage for approximately an hour on Wednesday, a problem the provider said was due to a power outage not related to the floods.
The advisory assured its data centre remained functional.
“Power is not yet cut,” it states. “We have more than 3 days generator fuel in the building tanks and a fuel trailer on site as a contingency which appears to be no longer required.
“As this is a N+1 redundancy site, we also have a spare generator.”
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