For two days last week over 600 Scotts Head residents had no landline, ADSL or NBN services, from 3pm on Tuesday until Thursday tonight.
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While some were able to ride the white out, others such as Glen Schaefer, whose business is dependent on internet access were far from impressed.
“Telstra failed to notify affected customers and update the fault status,” Mr Schaefer said.
“My street address still said ‘no outage’ on their online network status page https://outages.telstra.com.”
Further, he said that given the poor mobile coverage in Scotts Head and surrounds, the township was left virtually without any communications.
“A situation like this really highlights the potential risks in case of an emergency, let alone the impacts on the economy of the town and businesses like mine.”
A Telstra spokesperson said the problem was cause by a hardware fault and apologised for the disruption to customers’ landline and ADSL services.
“Our technicians worked as quickly as possible to identify and then resolve the issue.
“We thank our customers for their patience while we worked to restore services.”
When asked about the potential risks during emergencies, the spokesperson said that all mobile devices had an SOS or Emergency Calls Only facility.
“This allows customers to place a call to Emergency Services using another provider’s mobile network coverage when they’re unable to connect to their own provider’s network coverage.”
Mr Schaefer said the loss of service experienced was an example of exactly what he and many other IT professionals had predicted.
“Many have argued that PSTN * related services will be poorer once the NBN is deployed,” Mr Schaefer said.
“There is simply no business case to maintain the existing PSTN network and any maintenance services will suffer as a result. It does not bode well for regional communities like Scotts Head.”
And in other internet news for the village, the following has just been sent to the Guardian News:
Hello everyone who loves Scotts Head
Could you please help us, the Scotts Head community, in our fight with Optus. It plans to erect a tower beside Scotts Head despite the many objections we have raised. The more people that make a submission, the more likely Council is to refuse the Optus DA.
Can you please help by emailing the 1-page summary outlining these objections to: council@nambucca.nsw.gov.au
The closing date for submissions is 19 June so please get your email away ASAP
EXPLANATION OF ACRONYMS:
* PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is more commonly known as a ‘telephone line’ and is the most commonly used method by users that only have the need of one line for one conversation at a time using only one phone number.
PSTN uses an old technology whereby circuit-switched copper phone lines are used to transmit analogue voice data. It is the basic service that you have at home and in a small business. As a dedicated service, a PSTN line cannot be used for any other purpose while a call is being made. A PSTN phone number is equivalent to one phone line.
* ADSL or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber line or in other words ‘the Internet’. Ok, not quite the Internet, but it is the means to connect to the Internet. This type of service is most commonly used by small businesses because it provides enough bandwidth for a small group of users to access the Internet.
It works only over an existing PSTN, so you need to have an active PSTN to be able to have ADSL.