At about eight o’clock yesterday morning, my phone line went dead. Obviously, this brought down my ADSL service with it. <\/p>\n
This isn’t entirely uncommon – given the age of the copper phone lines in my street – (predominantly installed in the 1950’s when the estate was established) – and the slightly down hill nature of my street, when it rains the Telstra<\/a> pits often fill up with water and short all the phone lines until the water drains away.<\/p>\n Except it wasn’t raining yesterday, so I was scratching my head.<\/p>\n I wasn’t home at the time, but I could see from tools provided by my ISP that the ADSL was down, and calling my home number gave a busy signal.<\/p>\n I did have a theory though.<\/p>\n In September, we received a notice from our local water authority, Barwon Water<\/a>, that a company named Infratec<\/a> would be, between “early” and “late” October, connecting temporary water mains in our street while the actual water main was replaced.<\/p>\n There have been many incidents of ruptured mains in our street over the last few years, so this seemed like a good idea.<\/p>\n They never actually showed up for the first time until late October. They connected up all the temporary water pipes – (hoses running down the street and into each water meter) – and in the process of the work managed to sever a gas main.<\/p>\n Incompetency number one.<\/p>\n They weren’t seen again until yesterday – and of course we are now in the middle of November, some weeks after the work was supposed to be finished.<\/p>\n Given they showed up yesterday morning at about the same time as my phone line went dead, you can probably<\/i> see where this is going.<\/p>\n It has become apparent that they have severed the phone lines in a number of places.<\/p>\n Incompetency number two.<\/p>\n Here’s a hole in the ground in front of a house a little up the street. See the severed lead-in phone line to that house? (Click photo for a larger view).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n