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16 August 2012

Telkom cables sabotaged

Telkom cables in the Tongaat area in Kwazulu Natal have been severely damaged after saboteurs broke into the Telkom chamber at the Hlawe Bridge to set fire to the cables by means of burning tyres.

Five main optic fibre cables and three major copper cables were severely damaged by the incident, disrupting the services to 1233 residential, business and corporate lines in the area.

The services of customers with the exchange code 944 in the Tongaat North, Hambanathi and Fairbreeze townships are affected.

Mr Theo Hess, Telkom Managing Executive for Network Field Services says, “We are deeply concerned at this criminal behaviour and have reported the incident to the South African Police Services.”

“Telkom is also introducing a number of measures to prevent similar incidents from occurring.”

Mr Hess said that all the optic fibre cables have been restored as of 16 August 2012 and that the Company has already deployed several teams which will work in shifts to restore the 1233 affected services on the copper cables.

The services will be progressively restored until close of business on Friday 17 August 2012.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused by this outage and we assure customers that we are concentrating all our efforts into restoring these services as quickly as possible,” concluded Mr Hess.

For further enquiries, please contact:

Pynee Chetty

Senior Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel:+27 12 642 1716

Mobile: +27 81 389 7874

Email: chettpr2@telkom.co.za

 OR

Leigh-Ann Francis

Specialist: Media Relations

Group Communication

Tel: +27 12 642 1728

Mobile: +27 81 391 4780

Email: francilm@telkom.co.za

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ABOUT TELKOM:

Telkom is a leading communications services provider in South Africa. We had consolidated operating revenue of R16.8 billion and normalised profit after tax of R1, 683 million for the period ended 30 September 2015. Total assets amounted to R41.9 billion and equity attributable to the owners of Telkom to R23.5 billion as of 30 September 2015. The group generated normalised free cash flow of R1.4 billion for the period ended 30 September 2015.

As of 30 September 2015, we had approximately 3.3 million telephone access lines in service and 1,030,441 ports connected via MSAN access. We offer business, residential and payphone customers a wide range of services and products, including:

  • fixed-line retail voice services using PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) lines, including ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines, and the sale of subscription based value-added voice services and calling plans;
  • fixed-line customer premises equipment rental and sales services both voice and data needs and these include PABX, Computers, Routers, Modems, Telephone handsets and other ancillary equipment;
  • interconnection services, including terminating and transiting traffic from South African mobile operators, as well as from international operators and transiting traffic from mobile to international destinations;
  • fixed-line data services, including domestic and international data transmission services, such as point-to-point leased lines, ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line) services, packet-based services, managed data networking services and internet access and related information technology services;
  • Data Centre Operations includes e-commerce, application service provider, hosting, data storage, e-mail and security services;
  • W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), a 3G next generation network, including fixed voice services, data services and nomadic voice services;
  • mobile communication services, including voice services, data services and handset sales through our mobile navbar-brand called Telkom Mobile;
  •  information and communication services including cloud services, infrastructure services, workspace services, global service integration management and hardware and network equipment sales locally, in seven African countries, the UK and Dubai through Business Connexion Group; and
  • other services including directory services, through Trudon (Pty) Ltd, wireless data services, through Swiftnet (Pty) Ltd.

Convergence is one of our key strategic initiatives in building a sustainable future for Telkom.  We will lead the provision of converged services in South Africa in support of our mission statement: Seamlessly connecting people to a better life.