Of all the ways to accidentally knock out a shit-tonne of internet, severing a very important cable with your 4WD is definitely up there with the gnarliest.
Some services in the Northern Territory were down for a whopping 19 hours after the bogged 4WD managed to completely break the Nextgen transmission cable which was eventually fixed on Tuesday.
Vocus, the company that owns the cable, told iTnews they “became aware of the cable damage within moments and worked through the night to try to restore services.”
Users of Optus, iiNet and TPG internet services reported the outage around 5pm on Monday, which is objectively the worst time for no connection. So many good shows come out on a Monday, dude.
The unfortunate bogging happened between 25km and 50km south of Katherine, which is a fairly remote part of the NT. ABC reckons it was a 4WD “maintenance truck”, but this is yet to be verified.
The cable was allegedly severed in an effort to free the bogged truck with another 4WD. Furthermore, the rescue efforts were fruitless – the 4WD is still bogged as shit, on top of the cable.
As a result, engineers had to use an above-ground cable to restore internet services.
“Unfortunately, restoration overnight was not possible as the vehicle which had damaged the cable could not be removed due to conditions at the site,” said the spokesperson.
Old mate boggo must be feeling mighty bad right about now.
Source: iTnews.
Photo: Network Ten.
