TELEKOM MALAYSIA (TM) Bhd staff have been asked to be more mindful of any irregularities involving the firm’s installations in Kunak and Penampang to minimise any inconvenience caused to its subscribers.
This follows feedback from a Kg Mostin Lama resident, in the former district, and another from Kg Sugud, in the latter, about the problems which they had separately encountered in using their Unifi service.
The Kunak customer bemoaned his inability to access the worldwide web for more than two weeks recently. His Penampang counterpart, on the other hand, spoke out about the unstable service in her residence.
She said the Unifi signal kept cutting out, only to be restored a few minutes later.
This turn of events aggravated both subscribers tremendously as it made it difficult for them to work from home.
These individuals provided Hotline with the pertinent details which were forwarded to the company.
A TM spokeswoman said teams with its Network Section in the respective districts went to the affected villages shortly after the firm learned about what had been transpiring there.
She said the problem in Kg Mostin Lama was traced to rodent-related damage.
“The pests had gnawed through some cables servicing the village,” she said.
She said two TM technicians proceeded to replace the damaged infrastructure on the spot.
“They later checked on the distribution-point near the customer’s house. Our personnel tightened any loose connections inside and double-checked that his Unifi for was functioning as it should.”
This is not the first time that the company’s lines in Kunak have been targeted by vermin, including rats and squirrels, this year.
Bite marks were found on cables in different parts of Kg Simpang Empat in March, depriving two Unifi subscribers of the use of their service for a fortnight at the time.
A check revealed that rats had somehow managed to get into a black cabinet in the village and chewed through many of the fibre-optic lines inside.
A transmission cable – between Kg Kadazan and Kg Simpang Empat – was also found to have been damaged by squirrels during this incident, with TM staff noting that the affected section of this service line ran through some land which was overgrown with long grass and weeds.
In January, three other customers in Kg Simpang Empat had their Unifi service disrupted for almost a month due to rodent attacks.
The spokeswoman said the inconvenience created by pests in Kunak had been raised during a meeting at the TM headquarters in Kota Kinabalu in March.
“We intend to have our installations shifted away, in the long term, once the time and budget allow. However, our upper management at the national-level will have to say if this is the way to go.”
When asked if some sort of rodent-repellent pellets might be scattered near its installations in Kunak to ward off these animals in the meantime, she said this was not a feasible strategy.
Where the TM subscriber in Kg Sugud was concerned, the spokeswoman said, a technical fault with the company’s hardware was to blame for the intermittent service which she had been receiving.
“Our staff found that her modem was not functioning as it should and immediately set about replacing it.
“He has been keeping the situation under observation, on and off since then, to ensure that the connection remains stable.”
