THE cable break that led to the week-long outage of telephone lines to Richards Bay businesses may be the worst ever single incident of its kind in KZN.
That’s the opinion of seasoned cable repair technicians who have worked round the clock since last Thursday morning to replace a 2 400-pair main cable feeding the CBD from the Arboretum telephone exchange.
‘Other than flooding events, I know of no other lengthy and disruptive cable break as this one,’ said one experienced technician.
The break, caused when the cable was accidentally cut while new lines were being installed, triggered havoc to businesses.
The general public was also severely affected, unable to conduct banking, Home Affairs or municipal transactions – including purchasing pre-paid electricity or conducting traffic licencing dealings.
By Wednesday afternoon, some 75 percent of the subscribers had been reconnected.
The rest were expected to be back in service by Thursday evening.
The Zululand Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ZCCI) expressed deep concern ‘that a project in the Richards Bay CBD, left 2 400 users without voice and data lines for nearly a week’.
‘This caused a loss of revenue for a number of businesses in the heart of Richards Bay,’ said President of the ZCCI, Judith Nzimande, who had been in continual contact with Telkom during the outage.
‘The Chamber will engage with the Telkom executive to ensure that in future, all affected businesses will be given regular and timeous updates if such a crisis should ever occur again,’ said Nzimande.
