Work on the new bore disconnected Telstra services to Ngukurr on Monday. As a result, all services were out with no Mobile Service, landline or internet access.

This had a big impact on the community:

• unable to make or receive phone calls,
• no internet services,
• purchase electricity for home (using new 3G connected electricity meters),
• buy fuel (at all, even with cash),
• buy food at the store without cash.

Service was restored Tuesday night just after 8pm.

Advice given to Yugul Mangi is that the bore workers were drilling and cut through the cable. They knew the cable was there and had received confirmation from Telstra that it was safe to dig through (advice that it was an old unused cable) only to find the cable was still active as a result of previous work on the line allegedly not being done correctly.