Some Canberra residents have been left with phone and internet faults for up to three times longer than usual, as Telstra's efforts to repair its weather-damaged network look set to continue into February.
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About 700 faults were still waiting to be fixed across the ACT late this week and another 900 in the surrounding district because of ongoing delays in repairs dating back to wild storms on December 4.
The delays, which a Telstra spokesman said had now reached eight to 10 days, the peak this summer, do not have to be compensated due to exemptions from customer service guarantees and have led one telecommunications expert to call for better planning and response times.
Independent telco analyst Paul Budde said there could not be blanket rules in times of disasters, but utilities needed to adapt their infrastructure to changing conditions with more floods and bushfires.
"We know that some of the copper lines are so much more prevalent to water [damage] – so why don't we put in fibre lines?" he said.
"It would not be acceptable if the landline and the broadband were gone – it would be unacceptable if for those six or seven days you wouldn't have that service."
In its December 10 public announcement, Telstra – receiving an exemption from the usual requirement to repair faults within three days – said it expected normal service operations to be resumed on December 21, but on December 22 this was extended and on Tuesday the "indicative" date was further pushed to February 1.
Canberra was hit with rain, hail, thunder and lightning on December 3 and further severe weather warnings followed.
The capital then passed its average January rainfall by the 11th day of the month.
Telstra Country Wide ACT and Southern NSW general area manager Chris Taylor said 15 extra technicians had been brought in to clear the backlog, with up to 3800 services potentially affected across the exemption zone, which extends more than 300 kilometres east to west and north to south with the ACT in the centre.
The key damage had been caused by lightning strikes to buried copper cable and water running into cables.
Mr Taylor said simply rolling out fibre during repairs was not possible in many places due to the need for the relevant connections at either end.
For customers, the good news was no further exemption is possible based on past weather events.
"We would need another event for us to extend," Mr Taylor said.
An iiNet spokesman said there had been 17 iiNet-brand faults reported since December 4 across the exemption zone, but all had been fixed.
