Wednesday's truck-induced network breakage was much more serious than it first appeared, and had TelstraClear's repair techies working around the clock to sort it out.

Posting in the Geekzone forums, TelstraClear techs and communications manager Mat Bolland said the accident happened at 1.30pm on Wednesday when an over-height truck snagged overhead fibre-optic, copper and coax cabling in the Khandallah area. The cables broke at the point of impact, but the damage was aggravated by the driver not stopping. This caused the cabling to be stretched with further damage as the result, forcing TelstraClear to replace much greater lengths than would otherwise have been necessary.

Some 3,000 residential and 30 business customers were affected, with phone, data and cable TV service being down. TelstraClear says that as of today, Friday 22 December, repairs have been completed and service has been restored.

Geekzone has pictures from the outage site, courtesy of Jodine Laing, corporate communications adviser at TelstraClear. First one is of the site:



A rat's nest of damaged cabling: