PHONE and internet services went down in one part of Goulburn and traffic ground to a snail’s pace in the CBD.
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The NBN rollout caused a few headaches for residents on Friday but Network authorities blamed Telstra for some of the disruption.
Residents in Ifield, around William, Albert and Hoskins St, and Wollondilly School lost phone and internet services last week. Several told the Post that Telstra workers door-knocked the area on Friday, advising them that NBN contractors had damaged the lines during the roll-out and they should be repaired by later in the day.
Some residents said their services had been down since last Tuesday.
But on Friday, an NBN spokeswoman told the Post that it was not related to their work. Instead, she said it was a planned outage by Telstra as they switched from one network to the other in preparation for the NBN going live.
She said Telstra had failed to advise residents of the outage and maintained it only lasted five minutes.
"A registered scheduled outage lasting approximately five minutes occurred in Goulburn (on Friday) to switch customers to the NBN, “ the spokeswoman said.
“It is the responsibility of the service provider to inform customers that may be affected. Any customers still affected should contact their service provider.”
Despite this, Telstra’s area manager (southern NSW) Chris Taylor said late Friday he had no detail of a planned outage.
When advised by the Post that Telstra workers had been door knocking on doors affected streets earlier that morning, advising of the disrupted services, Mr Taylor said there was "a possibility" it was a planned outage.
Residents had their phone and internet lines restored later that day.
It followed a major outage in April which affected more than 100 Bradfordville residents and the suburb’s entire industrial estate for five days. Residents told the Post that NBN contractors had been working in the area before services went down.
At the time, Mr Taylor confirmed a “third party” had damaged a cable but declined to name them for privacy reasons.
Meantime, from about 2pm Friday, traffic on Sloane St slowed to a crawl as a separate NBN incident hit the city.
The block between Clifford and Goldsmith St was blocked and traffic diverted around, as a contractor looking for a gas leak drilled up the road.
The NBN spokeswoman initially said that workers installing the Network had struck a gas line near the Blackshaw Rd/Goldsmith St intersection. A short time later she retracted this, saying:
“Crews building the NBN thought they smelt gas while carrying out construction works on Sloane St.
"As a safety precaution, works ceased, the road was closed and the gas company was called. After a thorough investigation by the company it was confirmed that there was no gas leak or gas strike."
However, as the Goulburn Post took photos in the area, the road contractor advised against it, saying “friction” from the camera could set off an explosion with gas fumes in the air.
Goulburn Mulwaree Council undertook traffic control and the block was re-opened shortly after 5pm.