Press release

On the 31st of August at 7:27pm, I got an outage notification for two of my customers in Orapiu.  I was not surprised as I had an issue earlier on in the day with what I thought was RF inversion (where radio signals has issues because of changes in air temperature and water).  I changed the frequency I was using and that resolved it.

However this time I was unable to remotely connect to the device, these devices are brand new and very good quality so I started to become suspicious that some thing was not right.  Plus I have never had one go dark like this.  So I programmed up spare radio that I had in stock and went out to Orapiu to replace it.

Upon arriving to FullTilt’s wireless site I began troubleshooting and found that I was still unable to connect, so I grabbed my spare radio and went to climb up my to where my radios are to replace it.

To my surprise I find one of my devices on the ground around 10 metres away from the bottom of the tree.  This was very strange as the night was completely still, I investigated more to see if any branches had knocked it down.  But none had fallen.

Upon closer investigation it appears that some one had ripped the cables out of the device.  If you look closely you can see the ethernet plug pins have been bent back by the force of ripping them out.  This device connects our radios which brings in the high speed internet signal.

Whoever did this ripped it off the mounting as you can see from the back of the EdgePoint.

Then at the bottom of the tree I find the cover for the EdgePoint as well as a cover for another one of the radio devices in the tree.

 

I climb up to where the rest of my equipment is and I find all the ethernet plugs have been unplugged from all the devices.

Clearly someone climbed up to where I had my equipment and deliberately did this damage.  My first outage notification occurred at 7:27pm which is just after dark so I think that this was planned and not a random case of vandalism.  Also, to do this the person would require climbing equipment and experience at working at heights as it is around 8-10 meters off the ground.

This vandalism caused 4 hours of downtime for our Orapiu customers as you can see from the below chart, we always carry spare equipment and we were able to get it back up and running.

If you saw any suspicious on Orapiu Road at the 90 degree corner where there are a bunch of letter boxes on Thursday the 31st of August between 7-7:30pm please report it to the Waiheke Police on 372 1150 the case number is 170901/8093.

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