Fibre break hits Vocus customers across two states

Vocus customers across Victoria and NSW experienced a major service outage after one of the carrier's fibre links broke at Broadford, north of Melbourne.

Vocus notified customers at around 10 am AEST that the cut had impacted intercapital and regional transmission capacity and traffic from two states.

“Vocus has identified a fault on the network affecting inter-capital transmission and regional transmission services due to a fibre break [approximately 32 kilometres from Melbourne]," it said.

"Vocus has engaged the T3 technical fibre team for further investigation."

The cable break, which occurred around 8.40 am AEST, was blamed on unspecified civil works.

At 11.15 am AEST Vocus reported that it had deployed splicing technicians to location of the break.

“Vocus field technicians have arrived on site and are currently investigating the issue. Splicing contractors are en route to the site. Next update to be provided once available,” the carrier wrote.

The issues were finally resolved just before 8pm.

It’s not known how many customers have been impacted by the outage. 

The issue impacted iTnews on Friday morning, although access to the site has now been restored.

Vocus said that "approximately 140 services" had been disrupted by the cable cut. It did not elaborate, however it's likely the impact is being felt more widely, as many of these 140 customers would have their own customers to serve.

The telco said that "customers with diversified network paths were automatically rerouted and are unaffected."