Looking for Advice - Anyone Experienced nbn Cable Cut on Neighbouring Property?

Lemetia on 15/02/2022 - 11:08
Last edited 15/02/2022 - 13:49 by 1 other user

So I have a construction site next to my house where a new house is going to be built and they just started digging the trenches for the foundation last week. At the same time, I lost my internet connection, it didn't click at first that the two were related but I left it for a night and the next day the internet was still down.

I did some further investigation and walked around to where the trenches were getting dugout and I see my NBN cable hanging out of the side of one of the trenches. The construction worker was there and I told him that's my NBN cable and he says to me "oh I ripped that out yesterday I thought that was an old cable from the previous house that was here".

I immediately called my ISP who sent out a tech guy the next day and confirmed that they ripped out the NBN cable, he said that the whole cable will need to be replaced and that they will need to dig a new trench for it. He also suggested that it was NBN's fault for putting the cable through a neighbouring property in the first place. He also told the construction workers they would need to move their trash pile before anything can be done because it's currently on top of the NBN connection point near the road.

Yesterday I received a message from my ISP to say that NBN was investigating the outage in my area in the morning and then in the afternoon I got another message to say that the outage had been solved. I was at work during this time so I can't confirm if they came out or not. When I got home I tested my internet and the down/upstream lights on the NBN box were still out after restarting everything. I walked around to where the NBN box is on the outside of the house and nothing had been changed. The cable was still cut on the neighbouring property and the trash pile was still blocking the access to the NBN connection point. I have a feeling that the construction workers aren't coming back (haven't seen them since the tech guy came).

I called my ISP yesterday to try and find out what was going on and they had closed the case, and the lady I spoke to seemed confused and just sent out another tech guy… I have also taken photos of the damage and reported it to NBN myself but they have said it's up to my ISP to resolve.

So has anyone else experienced this? What did you do to solve it? How long did it take? Is there anything else I can do or am I at the mercy of my ISP/NBN?

Internet Broadband nbn

Comments

  • 87percent on 15/02/2022 - 11:14
    +4

    you're in for a bad time… hope you have a lot of data on your mobile!

    • emetia on 15/02/2022 - 11:42

      I have the cheapest mobile plan I could find and that doesn't come with much data… Thinking I might need to change that.

  • Cheaplikethebird on 15/02/2022 - 11:14
    +6

    Not experienced it myself but my sympathetic rage is peaking, please keep us updated.

    • emetia on 15/02/2022 - 11:42

      Will do.

  • RockyRaccoon on 15/02/2022 - 11:17

    Unfortunately, you are dealing with an organisation, and in this case its an unusual issue, dont get your hopes up that it will be resolved quickly.

    My Bro has issue, that his complex fronts two streets. NBN has his unit as being at the otherside street. NBN cant find his unit when they came out to install. He has then spoken with ISP, they had him send rates notices showing his address. Meanwhile they rescheduled visit, then cancelled it again.

    So far no word on when they will try again. And he went with Ozbargains favorite service ISP. Not directly their issue, but says when its out of the normal issues, the bureaucracies dont have great assistance systems in place.

  • 87percent on 15/02/2022 - 11:24

    out of curiosity, could you pm me your address and i'll have a look at what is in NBN's systems?

    • emetia on 15/02/2022 - 11:43

      Sorry not comfortable with sharing that info.

  • Costanza on 15/02/2022 - 11:28

    You just have to keep pushing your ISP to get NBN techs out to fix it.
    I would move the rubbish from on top of the pit myself, any excuse and the process will be longer.

    Put your address here and check tech type/service class etc (Don't post LOC# or AVC# publicly)
    https://www.nbnco.com.au/
    https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/nbn-poi/

    • emetia on 15/02/2022 - 11:49

      I thought about moving it myself but some of the concrete they have in that pile is too heavy to be lifted without machines.

      It's a HFC and service class is 24, no outages apparently.

  • ultravanilla on 15/02/2022 - 11:42
    +1

    I don't have any advice, but we had something in the same theme when we moved to our current house last month.

    Landlord had hired someone to tidy up the yard and trim some trees the week before we moved in. Said someone cut through NBN connection to house (overhead line) while trimming the trees and left it laying across the yard. Contacted REA to let them know and they were as useful as you'd expect. Contacted NBNco about getting it sorted and told it was not their problem and to contact our ISP. We didn't have an ISP yet and they all want to charge us for running a new connection in the realm of thousands of dollars. For a bit of cable and termination, no trenches or conduit. Right now our nbn cable is coiled up and dangling off our fence. Thankfully, we live in Canberra and managed to sort out a VDSL connection with the node being 50m from the house so not in a rush to deal with the bureaucracy of getting NBN fixed.

    Good luck with your predicament, but i'd suggest looking at alternatives to NBN in the short term…

    • solidussnake on 16/02/2022 - 08:32

      That's dumb I had a similar situation to yours big tree out at the front and the NBN cable stuck in between, got a ladder that morning and went to town on the branches, the NBN tech wasn't happy with the quality of cable so ran a new one from the power poll into the house free of charge I gave him a hand nailing the coaxial cable under the house to help him out

      It's definitely NBN co to sort out it

      • ultravanilla on 16/02/2022 - 10:29

        Yeah that's what I would have thought too, but I'm here for 12 months so I can't be bothered fighting it. Copper NBN probably no better than VDSL speeds given where our node is, and the VDSL is cheaper too.

  • Twix on 15/02/2022 - 12:11
    +2

    Contact the builder and get them to move their trash. Have you raised a complaint (not a fault) with the ISP?

    If the ISP complaint is going nowheres email [email protected]

    Last resort is to contact the TIO.

    • Twix on 15/02/2022 - 13:53

      nbn SA local email: [email protected]

    • JimB on 15/02/2022 - 14:13
      +2

      Contact the council to ask they contact the builder.

      The builder shouldn't place anything on the nature strip.

      When building my fence, I got a call from the council that I shouldn't leave any building material on the nature strip. I had to move 2 pallets of bricks by hand or risk a fine.

    • smashman42 on 15/02/2022 - 16:17

      Mention you're going to go to the TIO on your next contact with your ISP, it usually gives them a big hurry up and hopefully support people that aren't completely useless phone script monkeys (assuming your ISP isn't super crap)

  • Drakesy on 15/02/2022 - 12:44
    -1

    Classic NBN dodgy contractors.
    Go to house.
    Say you've attended
    Bill government/NBN for your time and call out fee.
    No one verifies you've done any work
    Go home and crack open a beer.
    Rinse and Repeat
    (I had one who rocked up to the wrong house, knocked on the door and left all while i was standing out the front). Then sent a text saying they came but couldn't access my property due to no one being there, even billed me before i complained.

    But yeah really bad that they routed your connection through the neighbouring property.
    If we touch an nbn wire when digging NBN come after us and charge phenomenal fees to rectify, but if they stuff up all of a sudden its lol my bad. Their ego is too big for their organisation…

    NBN Exec slap each other on the back for a terrible job well done

    And the coalition still thinks a sub par service more expensive than putting fibre in everywhere saved us money…

  • ozwog05 on 15/02/2022 - 12:49
    +2

    If it were me, whilst trying to sort out the long term solution, my short term solution would be to go with an ISP that offers 4G backup (if not already in place & you're not bound to an existing contract), then hopefully that may also put pressure on the ISP to get the NBN matter resolved.
    eg.
    ISP: "Why are you stuck on 4G backup?"
    You: "Because my NBN fault hasn't been resolved."

  • AB100 on 15/02/2022 - 13:09
    +1

    I had the same experience. My next door neighbour was using a post hole digger, and ran into my NBN HFC cable. 4 metres of my HFC cable ended up wrapped around the auger.
    I was with Telstra then, and they arranged for an NBN tech to come out. NBN tech confirmed that it was my HFC cable that was severed, and said that he would have to make a booking to arrange contractors to come out and run a new trench and cable from the street pit. It took around 6 weeks for the contractor to come out, and they ended up only replacing the section of the cable that the auger ripped up. As far as I'm aware, my neighbour wasn't charged for the damaged cable, as the cable shouldn't have been run on his property.

  • Qazxswec on 15/02/2022 - 13:16

    is it a fibre optic nbn cord or a phone line cord, my father cut the phone line out the front of the house replacing a pipe and TPG were really good about, they got people out here really quick and ran a whole new line from inside the house to the junction box at the front of the property on the street, dug all the trenches, filled them back in, took less than a week from the time i reported it to the time of completion

  • skid on 15/02/2022 - 15:01

    The good news is that you already had NBN so this will be classified as a fix and should get priority.
    The bad news is that it could take months.

  • DarkOz on 16/02/2022 - 07:35

    This would take time. Lots of time.

    If I were you I would ask your RSP to not bill you from the date of fault onward and follow up with the fault on a weekly basis. Look for a decent 4G/5G plan/modem that gives you enough data until the problem is fixed.

  • emetia on 18/03/2022 - 09:59

    An update on the matter:

    • Still don't have internet (its been over a month now)

    • My ISP sent out several NBN contractors over the past month so many that I've lost count and each time they came they said they need the civil team to fix the problem but apparently this never got back to my ISP.

    • Presumably, a guy from the civil team came out and scouted the location and called me to say that they want to put the new line across the other neighbours property now because they're concerned the construction workers will damage the line again but this requires digging through the neighbours driveway/yard and they need permission to do this, my neighbour wasn't home when the guy visited and so he left contact details for my neighbour. This was about 2 weeks ago and haven't heard from them since.

    • My ISP called me yesterday and I picked up and was immediately put on hold. After a few seconds I was about to hang up but then someone answered "Hello how can I help you today?" and I just said "uhhh you guys called me????" after some confusion the lady worked it out and they were just calling to update me on the matter. During this phone conversion I asked if they were able to provide me with an alternative since it's been over a month now and they're still not sure when its going to be fixed. They ended up crediting my account for the month I didn't have internet and the only alternative they could provide me with was a $15 mobile sim with 120GB of data which I'm kinda pissed about because my ISP does have the 5G backup modems as a service but as I'm on an older service they couldn't or wouldn't upgrade me.

    • emetia on 18/03/2022 - 11:00

      Forgot to mention that the rubble was moved.

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