Peter Grew is one of many Wollongong residents with the same question on their lips: what’s going wrong with our phone connections?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Towradgi aged pensioner and his wife were without a landline or internet connection for two weeks from June 15. But what’s really bothered them is the lack of an explanation.
“We haven’t had a phone here for a fortnight,” Mr Grew, 73, said. “All over the place there are guys working in the Telstra holes. One of them tells me it’s the NBN. You go to the next guy and it’s a different reason.”
His enquiries revealed more about the poor state of Illawarra telecommunications of late, with major problems in other suburbs.
“They know there’s a problem,” Mr Grew said. “At the Telstra shop, [the staff member] said they’re down in Berkeley and Cringila.
“There must be hundreds and hundreds of people who wouldn’t have a clue when they’re going to get back on. It’s a pretty poor old system.”
A Telstra spokesman said the company had called Mr Grew to apologise, and said the repairs required replacing some damaged cable.
“Unfortunately we have experienced some delays to our usual repair times following the storms earlier this month and we are working as quickly as possible to complete any outstanding repair works,” he said.
But he would not give figures on how many customers have been experiencing phone problems in recent weeks.
From customers who have contacted the Mercury, we can list these problems in recent months:
- Close to 100 premises in Mt Ousley had a major outage last week with some off for 7 days
- A Unanderra bathroom business was without a properly working landline or internet connection for six weeks as Optus searched for the solution
- A large number of residents were hit by a Telstra outage in May, for up to a week
- This was the fourth major outage for Telstra since February
- A Dapto resident spent three months without a phone or internet connection after an NBN-related bungle – but Telstra kept billing him anyway
- Shellharbour residents struggled with slow or dead Telstra internet connections for almost a month to January
There must be hundreds and hundreds of people who wouldn’t have a clue when they’re going to get back on
- Peter Grew
