Politics & Council
31 January, 2024
Editorial: Dial Us In for phone investment
GOVERNMENTS are putting the lives of Loddon residents and visitors at risk by not ensuring there is adequate and reliable mobile phone reception. Two major highways running through the Loddon Shire - the Calder and the Loddon Valley - are prone to...
GOVERNMENTS are putting the lives of Loddon residents and visitors at risk by not ensuring there is adequate and reliable mobile phone reception.
Two major highways running through the Loddon Shire - the Calder and the Loddon Valley - are prone to connectivity dropouts and the Loddon River is flanked by even more dismal reception. The lives or visitors and transient motorists are being dealt the same fate as locals.
This week the Loddon Herald launches a campaign calling on government - federal and state - and the telcos to take our local communities out of telecommunications blackspots without delay.
Christmas Day floods across the region saw some services down for more than five hours as the first of the summer storm emergencies was growing with a rapid crescendo.
Apologies for inconvenience that come from telcos after every dropout - they happen with regularity around Serpentine when storms brew - are all very well and good. But the problem persists, nothing changes and our local communities are left to live with an inferior connection for mobile phones or the internet.
And while telecommunication companies are just that, private businesses answerable to owners and shareholders, the government has a more than crucial leadership role to play in seeing decent services are delivered across the Loddon.
Universal service obligation arrangements were originally put in place before the widespread use of mobile and broadband services, as the Department of Infrastructure admits. It says Telstra is responsible for delivering the USO, and must provide standard telephone services on request to every premises in Australia within reasonable timeframes. This is both a legislative and contractual obligation.
But when the universal guarantee was updated in 2018, it did not include mobile phones. “Mobile services are provided commercially and are not included in the USG because of the difficulty of providing mobile service ‘universally’, that is, everywhere in Australia, no matter how remote, sparsely populated or untravelled.”
Perhaps the money raked in from unused high-data sold with mobile phone plans could be used to fund better connections on the periphery of a big city. Communities along the Loddon River, in towns along highways are not exactly remote - half an hour from Victoria’s largest inland city in many cases - and are certainly well travelled.
Over coming weeks, your local Loddon Herald will publish more stories in the campaign to connect our communities with 21st century technology. It’s time to Dial Us In!