A major incident was triggered in Monthey in the canton of Wallis late in the afternoon of 12 November 2020. The major disruption was caused by a Wallis construction company. While ramming down a road and the parallel railway line, a Swisscom pipe was damaged. The disruption affected about 1500 customers. However, several hurdles had to be taken before the cablex teams were even able to take up their work…
cablex received the report of the major disruption on the afternoon of 12 November 2020, a Thursday. The cablex technicians moved out on the same evening.
The damage occurred during the civil engineering work to open up a new construction area. A 72-fibre glass cable was damaged, which supplied a mobile antenna of Swisscom and various businesses. Among others, this included a bank branch, two post office branches and a food discounter. The connection of a generator was also interrupted, leading to the failure of about 80 mCANs. Moreover, a copper cable with 2400 wires and a copper cable with 1200 wires were damaged.
First, the causer of the damage could not be identified.
cablex received the report of the major disruption on the afternoon of 12 November 2020, a Thursday. The cablex technicians moved out on the same evening. The site of the damage was only 350 metres from the Swisscom headquarters in Monthey and in the immediate vicinity of an excavation of the civil engineering company. Since the name of the company was neither on the barriers nor on the bulldozer, the party responsible for the major incident could not initially be found.
When the employees of the civil engineering company arrived at work on Friday morning, it was possible to discuss the situation. The Wallis company immediately acquired the permit required to excavate another hole in the road in order to establish access to the damaged pipe.
At the same time, the civil engineering company closed the open excavation and opened this road side to traffic. A start was then made to excavation work in the opposite direction in order to reach the damaged cables. Since the pipe had been laid at a depth of two metres, the shaft had to be secured.
All of the customers were back online on Saturday morning.
In the night of Friday to Saturday, the cablex teams replaced the fibre glass cables and installed a provisional solution for the truncated copper cables. It was possible to put the interrupted mCANs back into operation with a provisionally installed mobile power supply (RPU). All customers were then back online at 5.00 a.m. on Saturday morning.