Telkom cable thieves cut off thousands

Telkom services to over 3,000 residential, corporate and business customers in Akasia, Pretoria have been disrupted due to extensive cable theft at one of the area’s exchanges.

In the early hours of Thursday 4 July, cable thieves opened two manholes close to the Akasia exchange and cut 11 main and direct feed cables, making off with approximately three-hundred-and-sixty-three metres of Telkom’s cables.

Customers with the exchange code (012) 549 in the suburbs of Akasia, Karenpark, Chantelle, Amandasig, Orchards and Clarina are affected. Large shopping centres have been affected as well as various medical centres in the area.

Telkom says it has deployed several teams and will work around the clock to restore the affected services as soon as possible. The services will be progressively restored by Wednesday 10th July 2013.

Telkom apologised for the inconvenience caused by the outage and assured customers that they are doing all that they can to prevent further damage of cables in the area.

Telkom has reported the incidents to the South African Police and Telkom’s internal security, and the police have launched an investigation. Affected customers qualify for pro-rata rebates on their line rentals.

Combating copper cable theft

“Copper cable theft remains a major inhibitor to Telkom’s capability to maintain and improve service levels. We appeal to customers in this area to be on high alert and to report any suspicious activity to Telkom,” said Theo Hess, Telkom Managing Executive for Network Field Services.

Telkom 24 hour crime/fraud hotline number: 0860 124 000

Hess explained that in Telkom’s ongoing efforts to counter the scourge of copper cable theft, it has adopted various interventions, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

Proactively alarming critical and sensitive cable routes and employing services of armed security firms.
Deploying various wireless technologies that are alternatives to copper.
Assessing vulnerable aerial cable routes; where feasible these are buried underground.
Working closely with the Non-Ferrous Theft Combating Committee (NFTCC) under the auspices of Business Against Crime and the South African Police Services, to jointly find ways of protecting our cable network.
Implementing a national campaign to raise awareness of the Company’s toll-free crime-report line (0800 124 000) as the co-operation and support of all communities is vital in stamping out cable theft. All members of the public are urged to assist Telkom by making use of this number if they see any suspicious activities.