Telstra will restore mobile services in Queensland within 24 hours following the damage caused by Cyclone Yasi in the far north of the state.
Telstra’s Director of Service Delivery for Queensland, John Parkin, said since Cyclone Yasi crossed the Queensland coast last Wednesday night and early Thursday morning the telco had been working to restore the fixed and mobile networks and providing backup support to customers.
“Our initial focus was on the restoration of our core network, which was vital to ensure telecommunications traffic into and out of the cyclone-affected areas, including Emergency Triple Zero, and to ensure communications for the emergency services,” Parkin said in a statement.
“The biggest challenge for us has been the loss of mains power and from the outset we have worked in direct alignment with Ergon Energy to ensure our critical sites were restored as part of their overall restoration program. This coordination is continuing and is vital to the speed of restoration work.”
According to Parkin, the telco has also deployed staff to Emergency Management Queensland to help facilitate the support of Australian Defence Force and State resources to assist in clearing access tracks, airlifting generators and being able to respond quickly to key priorities being raised by communities in need.
To date, the restoration of the network infrastructure has included 127 of the 159 Next G mobile network sites, two-thirds of the 60 impacted GSM mobile sites restored, the reduction in fixed line services out of action from 94,000 to 23,000, and over 50 per cent of the 32,000 disrupted ADSL broadband services restored.
“The recovery program is focussed on substantially completing service recovery for all mobile sites that are accessible by late tomorrow,” he said.
“We currently have over 3700 customer reported faults in North Queensland with a large number associated to roadside cabinets that we expect to clear quickly over the coming 10 days. We ask our customers to be patient during this time and if they have not yet reported a problem with their services to call us."
Restoration by location:
Rungoon- Ingham area
Fixed lines – Lucinda and Halifax exchanges restored, with a partial restoration of Ingham.
Mobiles – Ingham, Lucinda, Halifax, Palm Island, North Palm Island, and Taylors Beach are restored. Forest Beach Next G and GSM base stations are still inoperative.
Kennedy Cardwell Damper Creek area
Fixed lines – Cardwell services still remain impacted
Mobiles – Cardwell Next G restored but GSM is still impacted
Atherton Ravenshoe East Palmerston
Fixed lines – Atherton, Herberton, Malanda, Millaa Millaa, Ravenshoe restored. Yungaburra has services impacted
Mobiles – Atherton, Millaa Millaa, Yungaburra, Herbaton are restored. Ravenshoe Next G base station still remains impacted
Feluga Tully Bilyana area
Fixed lines – Tully, Lower Tully, South Mission, Cowley and Silkwood are restored. Kurrimine Beach and Mourilyan services still remain impacted
Mobile – Tully, Tully Heads Next G, Silkwood and South Mission Beach restored. Tully Heads GSM, Tully South, Bingil Bay Kurrimine, Cowley remain inoperative
Gordonvale Innisfail Elarish area
Fixed lines – Gordonvale, Yarrabah, Innisfail, South Johnstone, Babinda all restored
Mobile – Gordonvale, Innisfail, South Johnstone all restored Next G coverage
Townsville and Cairns
All mobiles have now been restored to 100 per cent
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