ALMOST two weeks of shopping and mobile mayhem in Wonthaggi appears to be over after Telstra completed their upgrade to 5G services on Thursday, September 28,
But the gain has not come without pain,
While thousands of Telstra customers, either living in Wonthaggi, or visiting the town, have endured intermittent dropouts and lack of service since as far back as September 15, local traders, including clothing stores, hairdressers and lunch shops, not to mention the big box retailers have been hardest hit.
A staff member of one of the town’s big retailers had processed hundreds of offline sales during the outage period, not knowing if those sales would be honoured with payments days afterwards.
“It’s been mayhem at times. We’ve had to go to ‘cash only’ payments at various stages and while the majority of sales have gone through and payments ultimately made, the concern is that a small number of people target these events, buying up big, without having any money in their debit cards.
“But what can you do,” she said.
Others told the ‘Sentinel-Times’ that they had sick relatives in hospital that they needed to be in constant contact with, and had missed messages and phone calls until they either went out of town or the connection came back up again.
“I received a message that this outage was coming up, but business owners who don’t necessarily live in town, were completely unaware.
“Honestly, I don’t think there was enough notice about these works or what the likely impact would be.
“If it’s over now, then good, but I don’t think it’s good enough for Telstra to just come in and turn everything off as it suits them,
“They need to put up some sort of temporary system while the work is going on.
“It doesn’t cost them so they don’t care but it certainly costs us.”
Prior to the scheduled works, Telstra put out the following media statement, carried on the Sentinel-Times website:
“Telstra 5G coverage will become available in Wonthaggi, with Telstra to switch on 5G services as part of a national rollout of the next generation of mobile technology.
“The improved coverage will follow an upgrade of Telstra’s mobile base station located in Wonthaggi.
“It’s really exciting to roll out 5G connectivity for the first time in these locations, meaning customers with Telstra 5G mobile devices can now enjoy a better mobile experience,” said Jenny Gray, Regional General Manager for Telstra in Eastern Victoria.
“We’re continuing to expand our 5G network across Victoria and new sites continue to be added to the Telstra network each week. Upgrades such as these continue to demonstrate Telstra’s ongoing commitment to regional Australia,” Ms Gray said.
“There are now more than 4,900 Telstra 5G sites on-air within selected areas of more than four hundred major and regional cities across Australia. 85 per cent of all Australians now can access our 5G network where they live.”
Telstra said they would “work to keep some technology operating as much as possible”, but acknowledged there would be disruptions between Friday, September 15 to Thursday, September 28 while the work is completed.
That’s been an understatement as it turned out.
Telstra mobile customers, they said, would receive text messages advising them of the upcoming works.
“Landline services, NBN internet services and mobile coverage from other providers will not be impacted.
“Any calls to Triple Zero from a Telstra mobile when the site is off air will automatically be diverted to any working mobile network for connection to emergency services.
Accessing Telstra’s 5G network
“For customers in the Wonthaggi area wishing to access 5G on the Telstra network, they will need a 5G capable device so for some people, that may mean upgrading their current device,” Ms Gray said.
Those businesses relying on Eftpos payment systems connected by mobile have suffered most while others with their payment machines wired into their computers and connected by landline, had no trouble.
As of 4pm on Thursday, September 28, the full mobile coverage was back up in Wonthaggi and hopefully it stays that way.
How did the Telstra outage in Wonthaggi affect you?