Telkom cables in the Tongaat area in Kwazulu Natal have been severely damaged, the fixed-line telecommunications operator said in a press statement issued today (16 August 2012).
Saboteurs broke into the Telkom chamber at the Hlawe Bridge to set fire to the cables by means of burning tyres.
Five main optic fibre cables and three major copper cables were severely damaged by the incident, disrupting the services to 1233 residential, business and corporate lines in the area, Telkom said.
The services of customers with the exchange code 944 in the Tongaat North, Hambanathi and Fairbreeze townships are affected.
Theo Hess, Telkom Managing Executive for network field services said, “We are deeply concerned at this criminal behaviour and have reported the incident to the South African Police Services.”
“Telkom is also introducing a number of measures to prevent similar incidents from occurring.”
Hess said that all the optic fibre cables have been restored as of 16 August 2012 and that Telkom has already deployed several teams which will work in shifts to restore the 1233 affected services on the copper cables.
The services will be progressively restored until close of business on Friday 17 August 2012.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this outage and we assure customers that we are concentrating all our efforts into restoring these services as quickly as possible,” Hess said.
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