The South African Press Association (Sapa) in Victory Park, Johannesburg, was unable to send out news copy yesterday after telephone cables were stolen from a nearby exchange.
Sapa editor Mark Van Der Velden says all operations were suspended around 1am yesterday morning, with the Web site, telephone lines and chief data line all out of action.
"When our operations went down, we contacted Telkom. By early morning they could still not explain why the problem had occurred."
He says all copy was pasted into e-mails and sent out to subscribers on a half-hourly basis via a laptop and cellphone, as an interim measure.
"It was then established that around 120m of cable had been stolen from the nearby Linden exchange. By mid-afternoon our chief data line was restored, but most of our lines were still down. Telkom promised it would be sorted out by 10pm last night, but this did not happen," says Van Der Velden.
Sapa`s Cape Town and Pretoria offices were also rendered inoperative as they file copy through the Johannesburg office.
Van Der Velden says many of Sapa`s lines are still crossed and it is receiving calls that should go to other companies, while Sapa calls are being diverted to other companies.
M-Web Business Solutions and Urban Real Estate`s offices, which are situated in the same office block, were also affected, although the lines have mostly been restored.
It is the second time in under a year that editorial operations have been halted at Sapa. The first incident was when a gang of armed men robbed its Johannesburg office of computer equipment after overpowering a guard at the gate and holding up the journalist on the midnight shift.
Share
