29 Jan update: Communication impacts due to flooding in Queensland

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 morning, Telstra technicians, who worked through the night, completed repairs to the damaged redundant inland fibre cable located near Harlin in Kingaroy that was swept away by a landslide.

This means we now have restored the backup link for our landline, mobile and broadband services that were progressively restored last night across the South Burnett region in addition to Central and Northern Queensland. As landline services are restored, customers will regain the ability to reach the triple zero emergency service.

The team of repair technicians arrived in Harlin by truck through floodwaters with police assistance last night to carry out the fix in the early hours of the morning.

In addition to these efforts, work has been completed 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 as access becomes available so we can 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.