Telstra outage cuts off town
A FED-UP Miriwinni businesswoman who lost a $10,000 real estate commission is among hundreds of residents south of Cairns facing a fourth day without mobile phone reception or wireless internet
services.
Miriwinni’s store, post office and real estate agency operator Tracey Atkins said the latest mobile phone and internet outage, which began on Monday morning, followed six days without the internet two weeks ago.
"It’s been working for a week and now we have nothing again – and people are being told by Telstra’s call centre that they are the ones with a problem, that there’s something wrong with their phone," she said.
Another resident told The Cairns Post he was put through to a call centre in the Philippines on Monday when he tried to report the outage, and was told there was nothing was wrong with the mobile phone tower near Babinda.
Telstra Countrywide’s acting general manager Amanda Colley has confirmed the Graham Range tower is out of service and the base station at Malanda on the Tableland was also damaged in stormy weather but was repaired yesterday.
She said technicians had been hampered by rain and fallen trees at the phone tower near Babinda but were hoping to fix the problem today.
Mrs Atkins said it was too late for her and some others. "We can understand outages but we’re fed up with the kind of customer service we’re getting," she said.
"No one is giving us answers or offering us compensation."
She said she knew of at least one real estate deal she had lost because a client could not contact her on Monday, before she knew of the tower problem, and switched to another real estate agent.
Yesterday, Ms Colley said businesses could apply to Telstra for compensation if they could prove loss of business caused by the outage, and residents could be assessed on a case by case basis.
She said a lightning strike had caused the Malanda outage and there was believed to be an antennae problem at the Graham Range base.
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Fed up: Miriwinni’s Tracey Atkins is angry at the latest failure of Telstra’s mobile phone and internet connections to the town. Picture: JULIE LIGHTFOOT
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