After the Storm, the work Begins…….

On Monday 10th March, around lunchtime, Gladstone had a significant weather event that resulted in numerous lightning strikes and damage with very heavy rain periods.

It was at this time that a lightning strike occurred to the tower at Mt Biondello. The strike caused significant damage to equipment on the tower and resulted in power to the tower being lost as the main power coming to site caused both HV and LV fuses on the transformer power to site to fail.

Once the rain had settled enough within an hour of the failure, Dreamtilt attended the site to determine the damage. At first it appeared our equipment was running on backup power, but further inspection revealed that the tower had received a significant strike and that resulted in damage to a major part of the Dreamtilt (and others on the tower) equipment.

In that brief event we had damage to the main tower router, damage to surge arrestors, damage to a backup connection backhaul radio, but more significantly, 4 of the 7 radios that connect customers was damaged and offline.

We realised this was a significant event and began works as quickly as possible, replacing the main router on the tower, replacing surge arrestors and bringing a generator to site for backup power within a few hours. This restored services to at least half of the customers on the tower before 5pm.  We moved as many customers as we could on to the remaining radios so that at least some internet connection service was available to around 2/3 customers by late at night.

This still meant we had a significant amount of work replacing the access point radios that customers connect to. We had spares in stock to cover all the significant damage that had occurred.

We had organised a permit to access and climb the tower within the next few days by that night and had access, and, very luckily we contacted Tasman Rope Access (https://tasmanropeaccess.com/) to assist us with the repairs late Monday night.

Tasman Rope Access quickly went into action, organising climbers for us the next Tuesday morning.

After setting up the ropes and climbing the tower Dreamtilt and Tasman Rope Access went to work replacing the damaged access point radios.

By lunchtime almost all customers were back online and by that afternoon, all radios had been replaced and all customer services were restored.

We also at the time upgraded core switch equipment on the tower site and ran new fiber connections to the access point radios.

Needless to say – it was a busy week with alot of work completed and services restored after a major storm event, again thanks to the fast response of the workers at Tasman Rope Access.

There is more work to do at Mt Biondello tower, and we have signed a new contract to have fiber installed to the tower site. This work is being completed over the next 5-6 months.

With a dedicated fiber connection to site, this will also dramatically improve the speeds connected to the tower and improve connections during significant rain events, ensuring we keep customers connected.

All of this is a significant investment into the Dreamtilt network, none of which we could do without the support of our local customers, so we would like to thank our customers for their patience during this major event and we hope our response shows the commitment we have to the local area.