Mice plague: Telstra mobile service outage for Werris Creek, Quirindi and Caroona residents as mice nibble through underground cable

People in Quirindi, Werris Creek and Caroona went without mobile service for days due to damage to the fibre that runs to the mobile base station that caused a transmission error.

Service to the area is now restored, a Telstra spokesman said, after a tech team was sent to sort out the problem.

"Sometimes when outages occur like this, they are caused by an underground cable being cut, by someone excavating on a property for example, from natural disasters like flooding, or landslides," he said.

"In this case it was the result of damage caused by vermin, like rats or mice chewing on the fibre connection.

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"Our estimated time to restore services is generally an estimate, but in cases like this when further investigation is needed to determine the cause, those time frames are a guide only, that we will then update when we have new information and next steps.

"We thank all our customers and residents for their patience, especially in cases where nature intervenes and causes service disruptions."

Residents were told the issue would be fixed on Friday night, and on Sunday the service still had not been restored.

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