General News
28 January, 2024
Dial Us In - The bars to phone service
By CHRIS EARL COMMUNITIES across the Loddon are wanting better mobile phone and internet service. After dropouts during the summer storm floods, they have called for 21st century telecommunications to be made an essential service. In Newbridge...
By CHRIS EARL
COMMUNITIES across the Loddon are wanting better mobile phone and internet service.
After dropouts during the summer storm floods, they have called for 21st century telecommunications to be made an essential service.
In Newbridge, residents are walking in circles to find mobile phone reception. And even when the service comes up to three bars, businessman Matt Mizzi said it immediately drops when dialling a number.
“It’s so patchy the phone might ring but you cannot answer it,” Matt said outside the hotel he owns with wife Michele.
Just a few hundred metres away, Sarah Davies has had to have a roster for her school-aged children to complete homework requiring use of the internet.
“We can’t get NBN, we are in a blackspot. The telcos just tell us to buy more equipment to improve internet service so for the kids it’s one at a time,” she said.
Matt and Sarah said the lack of connectivity posed a risk to the safety of residents.
But they also said business and tourism was taking a hit.
“There are all these digital tools for tourists to use but they are useless without service around here,” said Matt who who says connections should be classed as an essential service.
“The recreation reserve committee closed the camping area before one summer storm to keep people (away and) safe.
“And the electric vehicle charging station ... you need service to use the app and connect. With all the dropouts, it takes forever if someone wants to use the station in Newbridge.”
Matt challenged Mallee MP Anne Webster to spend a day in Newbridge to experience the poor service local residents and visitors faced.
“Telstra and the Government blame each other for no action and poor service,” he said. “just fix it, we say.”
“The service around here is putting people’s lives at risk. The best way to make people safe is by fixing the service.
Matt and Sarah are among 180 people who live in Newbridge, a figure they say the telcos have used to avoid boosting service capacity.
“But over the Christmas-New Year week alone the population around here - Newbridge, Tarnagulla, Laanecoorie - was more than 700 people,” they said.
Sarah says: “The service is woeful. And we built a new home and it came with an NBN box in the garage but we can’t use it either.”