A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet Australia that a "wet weather deluge" last weekend caused cable damage in the suburb, and Telstra had become officially aware of the problem early Monday morning.
"Telstra workers have been working around the clock since then," said the spokesperson. She added that 248 customers who have reported faults on their service have been offered diversion services to mobiles or other fixed line phones.
A local resident told ZDNet Australia she had originally been told services would be up by the end of Monday, but was later informed the fault would remain until Friday evening.
"It makes it very difficult," an expectant mother in the affected area told ZDNet Australia . "I have to stay at home at the moment...and I can't use the Internet or make calls, and it's a time when you really want to be in contact."
"I'll be all right in an emergency because I've got the mobile...but there's no reimbursement for extra mobile costs," she said. Telstra has offered to redirect landline calls to resident's mobiles, if they have one.
One of the things ZDNet Australia's source was concerned about was the lack of communication from Telstra, saying the telco could have dropped leaflets to the affected houses to warn of the delay in repair times.
"They need to be a little more conscientious about telling people about these things," she said. "People depend on communications for doing things."
Telstra's Customer Service Guarantee (CSG) claims repairs will be fixed no more than 'one full working day after report', but only when the fault occurs due to an administrative error by Telstra or if the fault "can be rectified without the telephone company attending customer premises or undertaking internal or external plant work".
The CSG explicitly states it does not apply when faults are due to "damages to Telstra facilities by...extreme weather conditions (eg bushfire, flood, cyclones etc)".
Wet weather doesn't cause cables to fault.Rather Telstra's 'risk management' strategy which leaves a huge number of low and nil pressurisation cables unattended in the network.These cables get wet when the water level rises in a manhole.Most connection joints are sealed in corroding leaking lead enclosures.Due to staff and resources cuts over the past few years there's a lot more of this to come as Telstra sheds even more staff.