Thieves last night (Thursday) cut and removed several main Telkom cables, meaning more than 1,500 South African homes and businesses could be without their landline connections for a week.
In total 1,523 lines were disconnected, made up of 1,105 homes, 255 business lines and 163 corporate lines.
The services in the Hennopspark, Akasia and Rietvlei exchange areas, in Pretoria, were hit by the theft and Telkom said they were in the process of restoring the lines with the expectation of full connection by close of business by Friday next week.
Theo Hess, managing executive for network field services, said: “We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this outage and assure customers that we are doing all we can to curb any further cable theft in the area.”
The theft has been reported to the South African Police and affected customers will be able to claim pro-rata rebates.
Hess added: “Copper cable theft remains a major inhibitor to Telkom’s capability to maintain and improve service levels. We appeal to customers in this area to be on high alert and to report any suspicious activity to the Telkom 24 hour crime/fraud hotline number 0860 124 000.”
HumanIPO reported in March how cable theft had led to delays on the Gautrain rail service.
Copper cable theft cost the South African economy ZAR11.2 million (US$1.2 million) in February.
