A lightening strike destroyed a Telstra cable overnight, triggering outages in Australia’s capital cities.
Numerous phone calls to Triple 0 emergency service lines were halted and hundreds of traffic lights in Victoria were knocked out after the cable between Orange and Bowral in NSW ignited in flames about 2am.
A fibre repair crew is working to repair the underground cable, which Telstra said has ‘significant fire damage’.
People in Melbourne have complained about EFTPOS machine outages across the city and some Foxtel services have also been interrupted, according to 3AW.
A lightening strike destroyed a Telstra cable between Orange and Bowral in NSW overnight (pictured is the damaged cable)
Phone calls to Triple 0 emergency service lines were halted and hundreds of traffic lights in Victoria were knocked out after the cable ignited in flames about 2am
The incident triggered outages in Australia’s capital cities (pictured)
Outages have been reported in Melbourne, Sydney, Parramatta, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and South Yarra, according to website Aussie Outages.
VicRoads told Sunrise the outage affected 700 sets of traffic lights, 70 of which were still not working about 8.30am.
The telecommunications giant said services were beginning to return at 5am and an investigation was underway.
On Tuesday, Telstra received more than 4,000 complaints after a nation-wide network outage impacted 4G and NBN voice calls.
Anyone who isn’t able to connect to Triple Zero should call 131 444.
A fibre repair crew is working to repair the cable, which Telstra said has ‘significant fire damage’