28 Jan update (PM): Communication impacts due to flooding in Queensland

Media Release, 29 January 2013

The following is the latest update on Telstra’s efforts to restore telecommunications services in Central and Northern Queensland following severe weather and flooding that has heavily impacted that region.

Earlier this evening, Telstra technicians completed repairs to the damaged coastal fibre-optic cable located at Colosseum that has contributed to the current outage.

With these efforts landline, mobile and broadband services are now progressively being restored across Central and Northern Queensland. Many services are now live and others are expected to come online throughout the night. Technicians are also ensuring that as landline services are restored, customers will regain the ability to reach the triple zero emergency service.

The team of repair technicians arrived in Colosseum by helicopter this morning with more than a kilometre of fibre-optic cable on board to carry out the fix.
Meanwhile, another group of technicians negotiated severe weather conditions by 4WD to access the second damaged cable north of Harlin that became buried in a landslide. The team will work throughout the night on restoration and repair works.

In addition to these efforts, work is continuing to take place to provide additional redundancy in the region via links from Darwin.

While the outages resulting from the cable-cut have now been rectified, some services continue to be affected by localised power outages caused by storms. These disruptions will be fixed as power is restored, or we are able to arrange emergency power.

Until all services are restored, customers are reminded that the emergency triple zero service may still be impacted or encountering congestion. If customers are unable to reach triple zero, local emergency services such as police, fire and ambulance stations will be in operation and should be contacted directly where possible. Temporary numbers established by emergency services are provided below.

We will continue to monitor the situation and provide the community with updates through our social media channels Telstra on Facebook and Twitter, and via our Service Status page in addition to regular updates to media. 

Telstra apologises for the inconvenience to our customers.  We are doing everything we can to get customers connected as soon as possible.

Emergency numbers for northern and central Queensland:

  • Cairns 4030 7000
  • Mareeba 4030 3340
  • Townsville 4750 5581 or 4750 5583
  • Mt Isa 4744 1111 or 4744 1808
  • Mackay 4968 3530
  • Gladstone 4971 3222
  • Rockhampton calls will be accepted from alternative carriers only.