During the flooding in Seymour on Monday, January 8, internet connectivity was disrupted for many residents.
Under one of Victoria’s most important river systems, the Goulburn River, a major NBN fibre cable, supplies internet connectivity to several fixed wireless towers in and around Seymour.
However, due to the heavy volumes of water in the river and the floods, this severed cable meant a loss of internet connectivity for about 700 homes and businesses.
According to NBN, broken fibre cables are generally fixed quickly. However, internet connectivity was lost Monday during the height of heavy rains and rising rivers, and their first opportunity to assess the damage was Wednesday afternoon when it was finally safe enough for people to inspect it.
Due to where the cable is and the volume of water still in the area, fixing the cable could take several weeks and requires boring a new path under the river.
Of course, this wasn’t an ideal solution for the 700 homes and businesses that were affected.
Following the damage assessment, several options were thrashed out to try to find a way to restore services quickly so that customers wouldn’t be without internet while the main fibre cable was repaired.
With water still high and fast flowing, getting boats on the water or machinery near the river’s edge was impossible to assist.
The solution? It’s using a drone to fly a rope across the river.
The fibre optic cable was attached and winched across the swollen banks when completed.
The two separate ends were joined atop temporary poles, and the 700 services were fully restored on Thursday evening.
Head of NBN Local – Victoria, Emily Peel said this was just one example of where NBN works as hard and as quickly as possible behind-the-scenes to find solutions to restore connectivity in natural or other disasters.
“During difficult times like these, the community will regularly see NBN out and about working hard to restore connectivity because we know how vital it is in helping communities to recover,” Ms Peel said.