Though most of the community are extending their hand in help for people who have been affected by the recent floods on the Far North Coast and South East Queensland, scammers are already finding ways to make life even more difficult for residents.
nbn say they are getting reports from some flood-impacted communities that scammers have been targeting flood-impacted areas asking for money in return for expediting the restoration of nbn services.
A spokesperson for nbn said the service has made aware by members of flood-impacted communities that some residents have received phone calls from scammers impersonating nbn staff and asking for funds to expedite the restoration of their service.
‘It is unthinkable that scammers would use this as an opportunity to target people and communities,’ said the spokesperson.
Please be awarenbnwill never contact customers asking for payment or any other financial information and we urge anyone who receives one of these calls to report it to Scamwatch immediately at www.scamwatch.gov.au.
Service resoration
The number of homes and businesses impacted by outages on the nbn network across Northern NSW has risen to around 79,000.
The spokesperson said that while this number has again increased, nbn continue to gain access to the network in some areas and have begun restoration work.
‘Where possible, we are deploying generators into the region to support connectivity and will continue to work with the emergency authorities to deploy more generators into areas where waters our receding.
‘A nbn Sky Muster™ Truck is also stationed at the Ballina Coast School, which is supporting temporary connectivity.
‘The majority of those customers are impacted by the power outage at the Fibre Access Node in Woodburn, which is operated by a third party.’
The spokesperson said that owing to floodwaters it is not possible to access the site safely and they have been advised it may be some days before they can get in and deploy temporary infrastructure.
‘The site is owned and operated by a third party and we continue to work closely with them to restore services as soon as it is safe’.
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