Communications blackout hits Far North Coast

Twenty-four hours ago you wouldn’t have been reading this post as thousands of phone and internet customers across the region, including The Echo, struggled and continue to have difficulty, communicating via 21st-century technology.

Every high point in the area including the Ocean Shores lookout, the Pat Morton Lookout at Lennox Head and the St Helena lookout and other elevated places were clogged with cars as people jockeyed for a place to call or text, some even had lap-tops in the hope of getting work done.

For the first time in almost 11 years, The Echo did not publish their weekday edition.

67,000 comms ‘stranded’

The number of homes and businesses impacted by outages on the nbn network across Northern NSW rose to around 67,000.

More than 56,000 homes and businesses are currently impacted due to a power outage at a Fibre Access Node in Woodburn, which provides fixed-line services to homes and business in Tweed Heads, Kingscliff, Currumbin Valley, Byron Bay, Brunswick Heads, Ballina, Lennox Head and Evans Head.

This site had been running on battery power, however the battery has been exhausted.

Owing to floodwaters, it is not possible to access the site safely. The site is owned and operated by a third party and nbn spokesperson says the company is continuing to work closely with them to restore services as soon as it is safe.

The remaining impacted customers (approximately 11,000) are around the Lismore and Ballina areas. This number has increased from approximately 6,000 yesterday.

nbn says they have generators on standby to support connectivity once they are able to access these areas.

‘We will also work to restore the remaining services in this area as soon as possible,’ sais a spokesperson. ‘However, this may take some time owing to floodwaters still making site access difficult and unsafe in some areas.’