Rodney Stevens
A National Broadband Network nbn planned outage that could last until the weekend has outraged customers of multiple Internet NBN Retail Service Providers RSPs in several Lower Clarence towns who claim they or their RSP’s weren’t informed of a 10 day outage.
When the outage began early last week, nbn customers from Woombah, Maclean, and Palmers Island posted on local social media pages about the outage, questioning how long it would last as they were living in the “dark age”.
Woombah resident Dane Webb said he struggled to even email the CV Independent to complain about the outage he says both he and his RSP weren’t advised of.
“Currently my phone is outside, attached to a battery pack in using Wi-Fi Hotspot in order to send this to you over a dodgy Telstra signal, luckily I have a background in networking, wireless and IT ” he said.
“Others would be finding the situation impossible.
“nbn co shutdown the network at 6am today, September 18 for a scheduled outage and it resumed about 5pm.
“No one was advised this outage or that it would last 10 days, so by visiting the nbn co outage website I got some information about their schedule.
“Work is underway in Clarence Valley to upgrade the NBN,” the nbn co website stated.
“To minimise disruption, nbn will aim to perform tower upgrade works between 10pm and 10am on weeknights, or where necessary between 6am and 6pm on weekends.”
But Mr Webb said they are doing the complete opposite.
“People are unable to shop online for grocery deliveries, they can’t make or receive telephone calls, get emails, pay bills – the entire lower clarence area, the online economic activity stops,” Mr Webb said.
“People are cancelling flights as they’re unable to work remotely from home.
“My provider iPrimus was not advised of a major scheduled outage.
“The nbn co say they will conduct a consultation in Iluka on the 28th of September about when this was to commence.
“But Iluka does not even used Fixed Wireless, they have Fiber to the Curb.
“It will be very confusing for them.”
After asking around local residents, Mr Webb said he discovered some people were notified of the planned outage at 9am that day, but the vast majority were not.
“Some people got notice of yesterday’s outage at 9am from Telstra on the 18th, and on September 2nd, Aussie Broadband sent an email about an imminent 15-minute outage, but there is nothing that is accurate that gave prior notice about this outage,” he said.
“While it is the RSP’s responsibility to communicate outages and information to the end user, as a wholly owned government enterprise it remains nbn co’s responsibility to ensure RSP’s are abiding by their obligations as nbn Retailers towards end users.
“There has been a communication failure which nbn co needs to fix.”
Mr Webb said since landline telephones were moved across to the nbn it made it difficult for those people who work from home.
“This outage places people in danger who use nbn telephony and results in overloaded cellular internet networks and local mobile phone towers being overloaded,” he said.
“People who work from home are unreasonably impacted, the elderly who don’t know why no one can call them are affected, and there are no call diversions in place.
“People who rely on ‘SmartPhone Wi-Fi calling’ to make mobile phone calls can no longer make calls, and emergency services cannot be contacted by a large portion of Woombah residents and other locations impacted by the ten day outage.
“I recommend that the nbn co be forced to supply portable Telstra Towers to provide connectivity free of charge for the next 10 days and whenever they plan extended outages like this.”
Mr Webb encouraged anyone who is impacted by the nbn planned outage to contact Federal Member for Page, Kevin Hogan to make a complaint about the nbn co by emailing Kevin.Hogan.MP@aph.gov.au.
“I have asked Kevin Hogans office to see if they can arrange for emergency Telstra Mobile Phone modules to be deployed as an interim measure,” he said.
“Kevin’s office has confirmed that a letter was sent to the Minister for Communications for an explanation, but no response has yet been received.”