Regional residents push for emergency mobile roaming due to blackspots

ABC NEWS (Australia)

There are calls for emergency mobile roaming to be made available in Australia to keep people connected during natural disasters. It comes after severe storms knocked out phone and internet connection to multiple communities in regional Queensland.

Transcript

00:00 Deborah McGee can see the Telstra phone tower from her property at Mount Moriah in central

00:07 Queensland but for a fortnight she hasn't been able to access any services.

00:12 We can't call out, people can't call in, can't access internet, emails or anything like that

00:18 using the telephone network which is the Telstra network.

00:22 The community and several suburbs near Agnes Water had their mobile phone service cut for

00:27 almost two weeks following a storm in late December.

00:31 It took until New Year's Day for a technician to be able to access the base station and

00:36 make repairs.

00:38 Even fully restored, service is minimal.

00:41 Yeah, rubbish, so if you want to try and ring out here, well, yeah, no hope.

00:46 You've got to crawl on top of the roof to try and get service.

00:49 I understand that we're a small community but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be receiving

00:55 the same quality service.

00:56 Here in the main street of Lomie, the Telstra network is showing between one and two bars

01:03 of 4G service but as soon as you drive away, that can drop out completely.

01:09 Local businesses are suffering too, unable to access FPOS or internet.

01:15 Whenever there's a minor storm or something goes wrong, we lose it and it's not a quick

01:19 fix for us out here.

01:21 Under the universal service obligation being reviewed by the federal government, the Telco

01:26 is only required to provide Australians access to landline and pay phones.

01:32 Should there be performance standards and should mobile be added to USO and also should

01:39 broadband?

01:40 Many of Telstra's base stations were knocked out by severe storms across Queensland last

01:45 month.

01:46 There are calls for emergency mobile roaming to be made available to keep people connected

01:51 during natural disasters.

01:53 Deborah Magee says she'd like to see the network strengthened too.

01:58 In the meantime, she's also paying for satellite internet.

02:01 I've put things in place to make sure that if we have an emergency here, I've got a backup

02:06 plan.

02:07 I shouldn't have to do that but I have because I can't rely on Telstra.

02:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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