Burke Shire Council stresses the importance of landline communication in Gregory

Over 100 Gregory residents recently lost connection for a week after storms caused damage to the Telstra tower at Century Mine.

With no access to mobile reception, residents relied heavily on landlines especially in the case of emergencies.

Since the service was restored, the council has made continued representations to Telstra to seek solutions and alternatives to reduce the impact upon customers both directly and indirectly.

One simple idea that the Burke Shire Council proposed was a recorded message for the duration of the outage. This would advise callers that the service was temporarily unavailable due to technical difficulties caused by circumstances beyond Telstra’s control.

Mayor, Ernie Camp, said this would alleviate concerns that callers could have when they repeatedly are unable to reach the affected customers.

“Council was always concerned with the loss of any service to its residents, especially communications, which provides vital links in remote areas for personal, business and health needs,” Mr Camp said

“Without land-based telephones, these needs are all compromised and we have to rely on fallbacks such as satellite phones and satellite internet, neither of which are guaranteed reliable and have weaknesses, particularly during the wet season.”

Even though locals are asking for more communication towers, Mr Camp said adding or replacing towers may not necessarily alleviate outages.

“An increase in provision of mobile phone towers would provide another communication medium for residents. The construction of a mobile tower in most areas requires an upgrade to the backhaul capabilities to support that mobile tower which in turn, in most cases, increases the capabilities of nearby phone services,” he said.

“The universal service obligation on landlines, which is currently subject to a Productivity Commission inquiry, must be maintained despite the current push by corporate stakeholders and government representatives to see it scrapped.

“The belief that the VOIP services offered by various internet service providers on the Skymuster NBN service can replace current landline services is misguided. Indeed, the NBN’s own material states that this service does not replace your normal telephone landline and should not be relied upon for emergency calls.

“As soon as there is the slightest indication of overcast weather/rain the internet goes out and remains out.

“The Skymuster service is more sensitive to cloud shading than previous satellite internet offerings.

“However the latency issues incurred mean that currently VOIP cannot be considered an adequate replacement for landline to meet daily personal, business, education and health requirements.

“Council has made multiple representations to government regarding this. Additionally, council firmly believes the USO should be extended to include guarantees around data service provision.”

Meanwhile, the council has been working with Telstra, state and federal governments to supplement funding for existing communication.

“We co-funded a $4.2 million project, that saw the installation of fibre optic cable into Burketown to replace the aging digital system and future-proofing communications into the emergency response hub of the shire,” Mr Camp said. 

“Council also contributed funding of $200,000 towards a mobile phone tower at Gregory through the mobile phone black spots funding program.

“The current paucity of a variety of reliable communication methods, taken for granted by urban counterparts, remains an issue all across remote Australia not just Burke Shire.

“Therefore it is essential that fibre optic continues to be rolled out across Australia to create a reliable, future-proof backbone to any solution, be it the mobile blackspot funding program or others similar.

“Burke Shire is working proactively with Gulf Savannah Development (GSD) to research and lobby for a continuation of the fibre optic rollout to Normanton from Burketown: this would not only create a redundancy loop for the Shires of Doomadgee, Burke, Carpentaria, Croydon and Etheridge but for a further redundancy loop for the communication needs for approximately 780,000 north and north west Queenslanders.”