Telstra has revealed that thieves stealing copper wiring and batteries are behind a three-week network outage that has impacted wineries in the New South Wales Hunter Valley during the busiest time of the year.

The outage in the Pokolbin area began on January 9, interrupting phone and internet services for residents and businesses.

Telstra’s NSW regional general manager Mike Marom said ongoing copper wire and battery thefts had caused the disruption.

“One of our exchanges, which services landlines and the old ADSL network, as well as one of our mobile facilities in that area had been targeted across January,” he said.

“We’ve had several impacts of theft … we’ve had restoration of services followed by more theft.

‘Flying blind’

The outage has also affected the Hunter Wine Country Private Irrigation District, which includes 140 kilometres of pipeline that pumps 5,000 megalitres of water per year from the Hunter River.

Winemaker John Drayton, who runs the irrigation project, said the system could not be monitored via the internet when the service went down.

“We were unable to monitor the pressures and the flows and we had a major blowout in one of our roads,” he said.

“Fortunately we got to it in time.

“We shut that down and we were able to continue pumping — but we are flying blind and that’s extremely difficult when pressures of water and everything else is paramount.”

Mr Drayton said the damage could costs thousands of dollars.

Poor timing

Pokolbin is not the only area in the Hunter region to be impacted by copper wire theft.

Late last year, the country’s biggest electricity distributor, Ausgrid, said thieves were using chainsaws and hacksaws to steal wiring from power poles.

Member for Hunter Dan Repacholi said the actions of thieves were “disgraceful” and put people at risk by preventing them to make emergency calls.

He said it also came at a busy time for the district.

“So many businesses have been affected by this and this is an extremely busy time in Pokolbin, with vintage happening,” Mr Repacholi said.

He said many people did not know the cause of the disruption until weeks after it started. 

“It was a bit disappointing that Telstra didn’t let us know about this earlier and that we had to find out from residents and business owners,” Mr Repacholi said. 

Mr Marom said those impacted could contact Telstra for compensation.

He apologised to the region for the communication efforts.

“I accept that we probably could have done a more precise job in regards to communication with respect to these types of outages, and that’s certainly something that forms part of our review,” Mr Marom said.

He said restoration work had been completed and services should be back to normal.