Mullaley has put telecommunications giant Telstra on notice after rallying at a public meeting last night to discuss ongoing network outages.
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More than 50 people attended the meeting at the town hall to air their frustration and anger over the problem which has seen landlines, mobiles and internet shut down for lengthy periods over the past six to nine months.
Residents submitted numerous letters outlining the impact it was having on families, farms, school businesses, schooling and physical and mental wellbeing.
The group resolved that it would break Telstra contracts or withhold paying their accounts until the problem was rectified, and the telco needed to honour its contractual service obligation to all individuals in the Mullaley community as per its licence conditions.
“The community requires Telstra to honour the private service contracts and provide equitable level and continuity of service comparable to metropolitan areas,” resident Geraldine McKay said.
“We will be monitoring them to see how they perform.”
Several residents and business owners addressed the meeting, however no one from Telstra attended.
Tambar Springs SES acting controller Robyn Styles was among those who said there had been major communications problems, relating to service and outages, for two years.
“For us it creates a big problem in the fact that if we’re on a job – and we rely on our mobile phones because radios are subject to interference – we need to call the ambulance in case we need other resources like the helicopter or medical retrieval team and there’s been times we’ve had to drive three, four or five kilometres to get phone service,” Ms Styles said.
The SES must also leave the out-of-hours duty phone on a witch’s hat outside the shed headquarters to get service and job calls if they are training inside, because pagers aren’t always reliable.
Gunnedah mayor Owen Hasler was at the meeting and has vowed to raise the issue at the next council meeting by way of a mayoral minute aimed at supporting the community in its quest to ensure Telstra brings services up to standard.
The village also resolved to support the Gunnedah ADSL Upgrade Community Action Group which sent a letter of support to the village.
Following several media reports over the service problems, five Telstra vans were spotted at the Mullaley exchange this week.
A Telstra spokesperson said a number of riggers were working on the mobile tower in Mullaley and one of its network technicians was also onsite to test the tower after the riggers had finished their work.
“We are currently looking at ways to help improve the site’s resilience and we apologise to the community for any inconvenience caused,” the spokesperson said.
Ms McKay said if Telstra did not lift its performance, the village would invite Optus to attend to the meeting with a view to break contracts and switch telecommunications carriers.
