TELSTRA'S mobile network in the Canna area has been criticised after reportedly causing problems for residents and farmers for the past five years, with no end in sight to their issues, according to Bruce Davidson, Gutha.
Mr Davidson said after multiple attempts to resolve his issues with Telstra he was told to find another provider if he wasn't happy with the service.
He said that was the last thing he expected as he had been a loyal customer for years and there would be one of few providers that could service the regional area.
Mr Davidson said in the past 12 months he has tried to contact the State government with little or no response.
"The phone, laptop and computer drops out mid-conversation and even mid- banking and we struggle to send text messages at the best of times," Mr Davidson said.
"If my wife goes to town, I'm here by myself, if I have an accident I can't contact anyone for help.
"We are the last farmhouse going north to Yalgoo.
"If there is an accident or medical problem for us, tourists, neighbours (some elderly) you cannot contact emergency services.
"This severely impacts our businesses and it is also an OH&S issue."
Mr Davidson said it took hours to download updates on the computer systems for his machinery which he sometimes had to do off the farm nearer the tower to get the coverage required.
He said the service would often drop out while downloading and he would have to start again - wasting valuable time on the farm.
Mr Davidson said when he "purchased this property the copper wires were beyond repair, making it impossible to have a landline so we are dependent on the mobile service and the Canna tower".
"Telstra's problem is they are obviously still in the 1960s, no technicians on the ground, it is now 2021," Mr Davidson said.
"Where everything revolves around communications, trucks, tractors, headers etc, if you have a breakdown, you can't take your landline to the paddock, you need laptops and mobile for fault finding.
"You can't run a modern business without them."
Telstra regional manager Boyd Brown said the telco was aware of a range of connectivity issues that have affected the Canna 3G mobile site.
Mr Brown said in March this year there was a series of power and transmission issues that shutdown mobile coverage.
He said the Canna site was serviced by a series of other sites which delivers the transmission signal.
"When these other sites are impacted by hardware issues, then unfortunately the Canna site cannot transmit," Mr Brown said.
"We are working to address these issues and we're also looking to upgrade the Canna network service to 4G, which will make a big difference to the capacity issues."
Mr Brown apologised to the local community for the ongoing issues.
"We do realise how mobile coverage is critical to regional communities and our technical teams do endeavour to get people reconnected as fast as possible," he said.
Mr Davidson said after the recent cyclone went through the area they were without communications and a mobile service for weeks, because there was no generator at the tower.
"My concerns with the poor mobile service began well before the cyclone," he said.
"I heard on the radio, what a great job Telstra were doing.
"They should try running Telstra from here.
"Weeks after TC Seroja we still have zero phone service from our tower at Canna.
"If we had been in Geraldton on Optus we would have had service all the time."
In February, Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud said an unreliable Telstra network was the most common complaint to his Queensland electorate, which was a situation that put lives at risk, possibly making government intervention necessary.
"People in the bush are at their wits' end with Telstra, with landline and mobile outages often lasting weeks," Mr Littleproud said.
Telstra chief executive officer Andrew Penn said at Beef Week, Queensland, two weeks ago that he would like to see a conversation with the Federal government about the universal services obligation.
"At the moment we provide communication via the universal services obligation, which is a government framework and policy, but it is basically dependent on particular technologies," Mr Penn said.
"It relies on copper and it relies on a high-capacity network and the reality is the world has moved on from those technologies and so we need to be able to re-prosecute that obligation but using different technologies - mobile, satellite, other arrangements as well."
