BOMBALA’S phone lines were out and businesses in the CBD experienced disruptions on Friday.
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Landline phones were out of service for most of the working day after an optical fibre outage at Ulladulla.
The outage, which occurred at approximately 6.35am affected services in Bombala, Cooma, Bodalla, Dalmeny and Tilba Tilba.
Penny Campbell, the owner of Lou Lou’u gift and homewares shop in Maybe Street, said she was unable to use her Eftpos machine.
“The online component of my business is quite busy,” Ms Campbell said.
“I was unable to process about six orders that came through on Thursday night.
“I can’t post orders out to customers until the payments are processed.
“I managed to get them off this morning,” Ms Campbell told the Bombala Times on Monday.
Ms Campbell said the town would have been negatively impacted by the cut to
service.
“With no holes in the wall (ATMs) in the main street of Bombala, tourists drove straight through to Cooma,” she said.
“There are ATMs in the supermarket and hotel but visitors don’t necessarily know that.
“Local people will come back if they really want to buy something but travellers will just drive away.”
Bombala’s Cottrell Motors owner Mike Cottrell was another businessman who experienced challenges with his phone and Eftpos services down.
“It’s made it difficult, I had a guy in this morning who was trying to pay his car insurance and he needed to take his new certificate of currency to the bank to get his loan approved,” Mr Cottrell said.
“That wasn’t able to happen and I guess you don’t realise how much you need it until you have to live without it.”
Mr Cottrell’s landline service worked temporarily throughout the day and he managed to contact Telstra to have a diversion to a mobile put in place.
“It’s not the end of the world because I’ve been able to put a diversion in place,” he said.
“I asked Telstra what was happening and the lady I was speaking to was in the Philippines so she obviously had no idea what was happening.”
Mr Cottrell had heard rumours about the damaged line also affecting the most of the Monaro.
The area general manager for Southern NSW, Chris Taylor, said that about 8500 fixed line services and seven mobile towers from Ulladulla, south to the border and across to the High Country, were affected.
Service crews applied a temporary patch during the day to restore some services before a full repair restored all services by 6.35pm on Friday.
Telstra apologised for any inconvenience caused to its customers.