Major telecommunications companies got thousands of Canberrans reconnected quickly after the fires.
As well as overhead lines, a major fibre-optic cable was destroyed when rats frenzied in the fire and chewed through it.
Telstra said 6000 homes lost telephone services because of the fire.
Telstra Country Wide regional managing director Roger Bamber said Telstra had on the ground almost 400 staff who had restored telephone services to about 3500 customers within the first few days and the remaining reconnected within a week.
Carriers gave special deals to enable residents to divert to mobiles or another landline without extra charges.
Telstra provided four caravans with phones at the evacuation centres immediately after the fire.
The 18 Telstra mobile phone base stations knocked out by the fires were restored the following day. And capacity added to deal with increased mobile traffic.
Where poles had been burnt, Telstra ran temporary cables into homes to get people connected and returned later to put the cables on poles as they were replaced.