Telikom restores telecom services

THE restoration of telecommunication services to most centres around the country is under way after strong winds damaged repeater stations last month.
Telikom engineers and technicians are fixing the damage, chief executive officer Peter Loko said.
Two of the core repeater stations had equipment damaged with antennas blown off alignment and solar panels knocked down.
The repeater stations, located at 3,000m to 4,000m above sea level in some of Papua New Guinea’s most rugged terrains, were often inaccessible especially during bad weather or heavy cloud cover.
Loko commended his team for their work.
The Telikom technical team was assisted by helicopter firms to access the sites in adverse conditions.
There damage done to a lot of  power and telecommunication equipment caused disruptions to power and telephone services.
Last weekend, the southern region restoration team accessed the sites and assessed the damage.
They will return to the sites to carry out repairs.
“I take my hat off to our network team for braving the harsh weather and difficult terrain to access the repeater stations that reported operational failure due to extreme weather in the past two weeks.
“I can assure our valued customers that services will be back to normal in the centres concerned,” Loko said.
He said the telecommunications company  regretted the inconvenience caused to customers and businesses but said unfavourable weather conditions would determine the amount of time taken to  do repair and restoration work.