Up Wolf Creek without a signal: outback cable cut disconnects top end TPG, Optus customers

A cut to a Nextgen Networks fibre is cutting off Northern Territory Optus and TPG customers north of Katherine. Since TPG also owns the iiNet and Internode brands, customers of those service providers are also affected. iiNet identifies the start of the outage as yesterday on its status page, 4:19 pm Western Standard Time. At …

[Anonymous Coward]

That's some 'gully'

I wonder how deep the cable was buried?

Also; if they know where the truck was bogged, why would it be hard to find the break?

[Kernel]

Re: That's some 'gully'

"Also; if they know where the truck was bogged, why would it be hard to find the break?"

As stated in the article, it's very likely that the cable will be broken is several place due to the tension put on it as the truck was dragged out - the only way to find the breaks is to use an OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometry) to locate the nearest break to the cable end, fix that, test, locate the next break, fix that, rinse and repeat as necessary.

These breaks can be hundreds of metres away from where the truck was bogged.

[Dagg]

The answer is Cloud Computing

Oh yea, unless someone cuts the cable. Ha Ha

[David Tallboys]

Internet, in the outback? It must have ruined the place.

I worked near Katherine in 1975, well actually 3 hours east from El Sherana which is about 50 miles east of Pine Creek which is North of Katherine.

The remains of the end of one of my fingers are there after an accident with a radon drill. "Oh, that's a hospital job mate, here's an aspirin. Now, it'll take you about 10 hours to get to Katherine hospital. Good luck."

No phones, no radio, no internet. Tell that to the kids of today. Etc....

Reception at Katherine hospital: "Oh look everyone, this pommie boy's hurt his finger. Poor little darling."