Although damage to telecommunications cables may be very expensive, generally there is no direct risk of personal injury. However, damage to cables can pose a risk to the general population served by these cables. A breakdown in service can result in isolation from essential services such as fire brigade, and ambulance.
Therefore, it is imperative that all precautions necessary are taken to avoid damaging telecommunications cables. If damage does occur, it must be communicated to the utility/service provider without delay.
In case of damage to a fibre optic cable, it is advised that an individual should never look into either end of a severed fiber optic cable as laser light might damage eyesight.
Underground safety
Telecommunication construction is typically done within right-of-way dedicated for the routing of other underground systems—municipal and utility pipes, wires, cables, and conduits. Damage to any one of these utilities could cause a disruption of services. At worst, it may cause catastrophic harm to personnel and surrounding property.
It is usually required by law that you contact all operators of these systems prior to the start of any excavation, including those that are out of the right-of-way (ROW). These system operators will indicate horizontal location of their plants with a flag or paint mark, called a locate mark or locate.
Law usually requires that the subsurface plant owner perform this duty within a defined time period and ensure that the locate marks are correctly positioned. The primary intent of the locate mark is to prevent damage to conflicting ROW, not to define liability.
However, the recovery of damages resulting from excavation work is generally decided with high consideration given to the locate marks.
Once the horizontal location of the conflicting ROW has been established, the depth, or “vertical” location of the ROW must be determined. This is usually done by potholing, or carefully digging a hole until the conflicting ROW (or its warning tape) is located.
The owner of the real estate should also be contacted prior to excavation. There may be a water sprinkler, closed circuit television or communication systems buried in or around the ROW.
The excavating party should also make necessary locate marks on their existing plant. Underground installations typically terminate in a pit or trench that is accessible to the public. Pits and trenches Must be guarded by barricades, warning devices and covers.
City Telecommunications Cable Damage Case Study
A contractor in the west of Sydney drilling pier holes for the construction of townhouses caused significant damage to telecommunication cables resulting in severe disruption to telecommunication services in New South Wales.
An auger operated by an excavation contractor made a direct hit on a telecommunications cable route. Thousands of telephone lines, mobile phone towers, EFTPOS terminals and data lines went dead all over New South Wales instantly.
The auger, a giant drill, severed six fibre optic cables running between 12 and 60 fibres each and a 2400 copper pair cable, about seven kilometres from the Parramatta exchange.
Physical cable damage was not confined to the one hole in the ground – it wrenched and ripped cables clean out of manholes for hundreds of metres on either side.
One of the cables was the main feed to the Bathurst and Orange area, others carried mobile phone traffic. Almost all the copper lines were in use by local households and businesses and, not least of all, the main ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) Internet backbone running to the south and west out of Sydney.
At one ISP alone, more than 100,000 customers across four states were unable to log on to the Internet for hours. Also 250,000 Foxtel service subscribers were disconnected, some for nearly 12 hours.
It was not just the phone services that went down. EFTPOS services died, and staff from a Bathurst supermarket were reduced to hunting around other businesses for manual transfer forms for more than a day so customers could buy groceries and debit their bank accounts.
E-mail access in Bathurst was out too. Had the ‘Dial Before You Dig’ service been contacted on 1100 and the appropriate plans used, the damage could have been avoided. If there is any doubt at all about cable location, Telstra will send staff to show contractors and property owners how to check for stray lines.
However, there was no call placed to the 1100 service for this damage. When people in west Sydney picked up their phones and found no signal, they might have expected their mobiles or other carrier services to fill the gap. But Telstra, Optus, AAPT, Vodafone and Primus were all affected to some extent.
This incident was the cable cut of all cable cuts, but cut and flooded cables take down parts of the telephone and data network every day. It took 50 technicians until 11.00 that night just to restore all the services, and two-and-a half days to finish all the work, cable damage that could have been easily avoided.
