Telstra said the winds which reached 120km/h wiped out power to 288 of its copper exchanges -- the vast majority of which were located in southern NSW central and coastal regions.
Presently 28 of the exchanges are still blacked out leaving nearly 28,000 of Telstra's customers without basic telephone access; however, services to up to 650,000 more customers are also in doubt.
Telstra crews are today in a race against time to sustain power at the other 260 exchanges impacted by outages. Telstra said that it had deployed generators to support the larger exchanges in the group but that most were relying on in back-up batteries installed at each site.
As meteorologists were today forecasting more strong winds throughout NSW, Telstra said utility companies had not indicated when power would be restored at its sites.
Energy Australia is reported to have said that power had been restored to around 40,000 of around 190,000 homes left without electricity but that many could be waiting on service for 48 hours.
Telstra said back-up batteries installed at each exchange could be expected to last eight hours but that it would continue to top them up using mobile generators.
According to Telstra all the vast majority of outages on its nework lay in a band stretching from Sydney to the Illawarra and as far inland as the Riverina town of Wagga Wagga. The only exchange outside the state that was affected was located in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
The power outages also affected 20 of Telstra's mobile service sites. A handful of customers throughout the south coast regions of Shoalhaven, Huskisson and Sanctuary Cove reported ADSL problems unrelated to power failures at the exchanges.
There have also been unconfirmed reports that some Telstra's internal phone routing was misdirecting calls for a short time this morning.
