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Cable theft encumbers Kyalami Businesses

Telkom's customers in the area of Kyalami, Johannesburg, have become the latest victims of cable theft that disrupted services to thousands of predominately business customers in the area.

Telkom has started the restoration of the affected services and have deployed several teams to expedite the repair process. The 3282 affected services to Business and Corporate customers will be restored progressively until close of business on Thursday 28 June 2012. There was no impact on the Company's residential customers in Kyalami.

On Sunday evening, 24 June 2012, cable thieves broke through a manhole roof in Main Road, Kyalami and cut three main copper cables. Telkom has reported the incident and a police investigation is underway.

The thieves exposed Telkom pipes on the cable run and removed approximately 70 metres of 1200 and 800 pair copper cables. A 2400 pair main cable was also cut in the process.

Customers with the exchange code 466 in the Kyalami Park and Kyalami Business Park areas are affected.

"This crime has seriously affected our customers, especially our business customers. Cable theft results in loss in income for all concerned and ultimately the South African economy suffers," says Theo Hess, Telkom's Managing Executive: Network Field Services.

"We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this outage and we assure customers that we are doing all that we can to curb any further cable theft in the area," said Mr Hess.

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 Telkom's 24 hour crime/fraud hotline number 0800 124 000.

In our efforts to counter the scourge of copper cable theft nationally, said Mr Hess, Telkom has adopted various interventions, which include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Proactively alarming critical and sensitive cable routes and employing services of armed security firms.
• Deploying various wireless technologies that are alternatives to copper.
• Assessing vulnerable aerial cable routes and, where feasible, these are buried underground.
• Working closely with the Non-Ferrous Theft Combating Committee (NFTCC) under the auspices of Business Against Crime and the South African Police Services, to jointly find ways of protecting our cable network.
• Working closely with law enforcement agencies to implement and enforce the 2nd hand goods bill.
• Implementing a national campaign to raise awareness of the Company's toll-free crime-report line (0800124000) as the co-operation and support of all communities is vital in stamping out cable theft. All members of the public are urged to assist Telkom by making use of this number if they see any suspicious activities.

Affected customers do qualify for pro-rata rebates on their line rentals. Currently customers are advised to call our Billing Enquiries Service on 10210 to enquire about such rebates for the period during which their lines were non-functional. Ordinarily, once an account of a service is linked to a bulk-fault, the credit is automatically passed to the customer.