Telkom has blamed R2,5m in damages caused by suspected vandals on downtime for customers in parts of Johannesburg.
The company said on Thursday that customers on Johannesburg’s West Rand are experiencing interrupted services as a result of the suspected vandalism of its infrastructure.
The suburbs impacted by this include Newlands, Roodepoort, Florida and Witpoortjie, Telkom said.
“Criminals are targeting street distribution cabinets, where modules are stolen or damaged, impacting voice services to customers. Damage to the modules results in the loss of dialling tone between Telkom customers,” it said.
Both residential and business customers have been affected.
“The stolen modules have no significant scrap value when sold in the market. Telkom is working with law enforcement officials to investigate these incidents.”
It said its teams are on the ground to restore services to affected customers. “We estimate services will be fully restored in the next two weeks.”
In 2016, Telkom suffered extensive downtime on parts of its network after “saboteurs” targeted its infrastructure. The attacks came amidst protracted industrial action at the company by members of the Communication Workers Union.
At the time, Telkom offered a R500 000 reward for information that led to the arrest and prosecution of anyone deliberately damaging its network. — (c) 2017 NewsCentral Media