Telkom hit by more copper theft
Telkom customers in the area of Kyalami, Johannesburg, have become the latest victims of cable theft which disrupted services to thousands of predominately business customers in the area, the telecommunications operator said in a press statement today (26 June 2012).
Restoration of the affected services has begun, Telkom said, adding that they have deployed several teams to speed up repairs.
The 3282 affected services to Business and Corporate customers will be restored progressively until close of business on Thursday 28 June 2012, Telkom said. There was no impact on residential customers in Kyalami.
On Sunday evening (24 June 2012), cable thieves broke through a manhole roof in Main Road, Kyalami and cut three main copper cables. Telkom has reported the incident and a police investigation is underway.
The thieves exposed Telkom pipes on the cable run and removed approximately 70 metres of 1200 and 800 pair copper cables. A 2400 pair main cable was also cut in the process.
Customers with the exchange code 466 in the Kyalami Park and Kyalami Business Park areas are affected.
“This crime has seriously affected our customers, especially our business customers. Cable theft results in loss in income for all concerned and ultimately the South African economy suffers,” said Theo Hess, Telkom’s managing executive of network field services.
“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this outage and we assure customers that we are doing all that we can to curb any further cable theft in the area,” Hess said.
Telkom said that copper cable theft remains a major inhibitor to their capability to maintain and improve service levels. “We appeal to customers in this area to be on high alert and to report any suspicious activity to Telkom’s 24 hour crime/fraud hotline number 0800 124 000,” Telkom said.
Affected customers do qualify for pro-rata rebates on their line rentals. Telkom advised customers to call its billing enquiries service on 10210 to ask about such rebates for the period during which their lines were not working.
Telkom said that once an account of a service is linked to a bulk-fault, the credit is ordinarily passed to the customer automatically.
Related articles
Cable theft: what is being done
Cable theft effect: you’ll be surprised
Loading ...