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For parts of outback Australia, landline phones are the only way to communicate with family, friends and emergency services.
Some remote pastoral leases across South Australia lost that service for 11 days.From Tuesday, October 23 until Friday, November 2, 11 pastoral leases experienced intermittent landline services.
These properties are serviced by Telstra, which has a responsibility under the Universal Service Obligation to provide landline phone services to all Australians.
It is also required to repair faults within three working days.
Now there are calls for a Senate inquiry into how Telstra services the outback, following the outage.
Safety concerns
William Creek is a remote town, halfway between Marree and Coober Pedy, on the unsealed Oodnadatta Track.The local publican, Trevor Wright, said the outage made the outback unsafe.
"You've got people that need to ring 000, get onto the RFDS, get on to the Police and to get back up," Mr Wright said.
"What you have to remember in these highly remote communities, there is so few people over such a huge area of ground that when you haven't got telecommunications, you leave yourself open."Mr Wright is now calling for a Senate inquiry, saying Telstra needs to be held accountable.
"They're responsible under that universal agreement for landlines and, in a lot of cases, that's all that the stations have out there," Mr Wright said.
"They need to be accountable."The time limits that have been placed on them with the universal agreement has to be put in place."
Sandy Sumsion operates a business at Roxby Downs, six hours north of Adelaide, near the Olympic Dam mine, and said an inquiry was needed.
"The sooner the better because we are in an isolated area here in Roxby Downs and our businesses, as well as our residents, rely on effective communications," she said.
Inquiry Unnecessary
All of outback South Australia sits within the Federal Liberal-held seat of Grey.Its MP, Rowan Ramsey, said an inquiry into how Telstra delivers services to the outback is not needed.
"I'm doubtful a Senate inquiry would tell us anything we don't already know," he said.
"The provision of landline services, which is the Universal Service Obligation, the system used to deliver it, is outmoded."It's a radio line hook up that relies on every radio tower to work to reach the end of the line.
"If one of those towers go out for whatever reason, everybody beyond that point slips off."
Mr Ramsey said Telstra was aware of the concerns outback residents have with the telco, and are investigating satellite services for mobile phones.
"As far as replacing the landline system, I know they are investigating the possibility of doing that also, with satellite," he said.
Independent Audit Underway
While Mr Ramsey said a Senate inquiry was not needed, the Federal Department of Communications has confirmed it is auditing Telstra's services in the wake of the outage."Telstra advised that landline services to 11 northern South Australia sites experienced intermittent outages in early November," a spokesman for the Department said.
"The Department of Communications is undertaking an audit into Telstra's contractual performance in the delivery of the Universal Service Obligation."Telstra must ensure telephone faults in remote areas are repaired within three working days under the Customer Service Guarantee."
In a written statement, Telstra said it tries to fix all faults as quickly as possible.
"However, for a variety of reasons sometimes this may take longer than expected and we apologise to those impacted customers," a spokesperson said.
"All eligible customers whose fault is not repaired within CSG timeframe receives daily compensation from their Retail Service Provider until a working service is restored.
"The Department of Communications has audit rights under its contract with Telstra for delivery of the Universal Service Obligation services and exercises its audit right from time to time.
"This is standard procedure and when an audit is underway Telstra cooperates fully with the independent auditor and the Department."
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