Bendigo Senior Secondary College internet restored after five-day outage

The internet service is back up and running at Bendigo Senior Secondary College.

Both principal Dale Pearce and Telstra confirmed the issue had been resolved.

The school had been without internet since noon on Saturday.

Thursday 3pm

Telstra has confirmed it is working to fix a hardware fault that is causing internet issues at Bendigo Senior Secondary College.

A Telstra Wholesale spokesperson said the company received a notification of the issue on Saturday night and a technician was sent to investigate on Sunday.

The technician identified it was a cable fault, but could not confirm if it was at the school because they could not access the school outside of business hours.

A specialist fibre technician confirmed the cable fault on Monday. The fault was rectified on Tuesday, but there were still issues with the internet.

A hardware specialist confirmed a further hardware issue at the school on Wednesday.

A technician was onsite on Thursday afternoon to fix the issue and restore services.

"We're working to fix a hardware fault which is impacting services at Bendigo Senior Secondary College," a Telstra Wholesale spokesperson said.

"This has been a complex issue to resolve and we've also had some delays due to site access.

"We want to apologise for the impact to services at the school especially during the VCE exam period."

Bendigo Senior Secondary College principal Dale Pearce said the school was still without internet on Thursday afternoon.

Earlier

The largest Victorian Certificate of Education provider in the state has been without internet during the year 12 exam period.

Bendigo Senior Secondary College principal Dale Pearce said the school had experienced internet issues with Telstra, through service provider Broadband Solutions, since noon on Saturday.

Staff and students have only been able to send and receive emails internally in the past several days.

"We have staff who can't do their jobs properly," Mr Pearce said. "I dread the day when the internet is back up because I will have hundreds of unread emails."

Any emails from external sources hadn't come through, Mr Pearce said.

Read more: Mobile service woes in East Bendigo

The school's website has also been down for the past several days, which has resulted in restricted access to the parent and student portal.

The VCE exams began on October 30 and will run through to November 20.

Since the outage began on Saturday, there have been exams for Further Mathematics, Business Management, Mathematical Methods, and VET Hospitality.

"People say they want exams to go online but I think this is an example of why they shouldn't," Mr Pearce said.

Mr Pearce said he was unaware if Telstra had determined what the issue was or when it would be resolved.

A Telstra spokesperson said the company was not aware of a fault at this stage.

The disruptions at Bendigo Senior Secondary College come after Telstra outages disrupted a number of businesses in East Bendigo last month.

Several businesses in the vicinity of Powells Avenue and Piper Lane had mobile phone reception and internet issues for several days.

At least 50 per cent of in-house guests at Bendigo's All Seasons Resort Hotel also complained about poor mobile reception.

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