Thread: Awful Outback mobile and internet service

After reading Ron Moon's column in the latest issue of 4 x 4 Australia, I wrote a letter which I have copied below. If you also feel strongly about this, maybe you might also like to write. Can we help to get a campaign going? It couldn't make the situation any worse.

The address is: 4x4australia@bauertrader.com.au


Letter to the Editor, Matt Raudonikis


Dear Matt,


Anyone who has travelled overseas knows that Ron Moon's description of outback Australia's mostly non-existent mobile phone and internet coverage as '**** poor' (February 2016, p. 166) is absolutely spot on.

I have had much better mobile coverage in the back blocks of Thailand and Cambodia than in Australia. On our last big trip from Brisbane to Alice Springs and return we travelled about 6000 kms in total and our mobiles only worked for about 500kms of that distance, including in some towns, but as soon as you passed the town boundaries they died.*

The residents of what other country would accept the Australian situation where only about 15% of our landmass has mobile reception?

Yes, we have a big country, but the really dangerous fact is that so few of our outback highways have mobile reception. This is not just a matter of urban yuppies wanting to keep up with their Facebook friends while travelling, it's actually a serious matter of life and death.

How many people have died because they broke down or became ill or crashed and were injured and it was impossible to call an ambulance because their phones were useless?

As Moonie also pointed out, the internet is pretty much unavailable outside the major cities and large towns.*

The current government downgraded the National Broadband Network from fibre to the home plus some satellite to fibre to the node plus a lot more satellite, claiming that would save a lot of money. However, the latest figures show the cost has almost climbed to match the original estimate, but the promised speed has plummeted from 100 mbs to 25 mbs - if it is actually available, which it is not for much of the country. By world standards, our internet service is very, very poor.

I can understand telephone companies making a commercial decision to concentrate on the most profitable urban areas, but we expect our governments to act to ensure a reasonable standard of communications are available throughout the country. Many MPs claim to represent rural constituents, but in fact they seem to have dropped the ball.

For much of our history we tried to populate the interior to overcome fears that foreigners would come in and take this country away from us, just as we did to the Aborigines, but by failing to ensure reasonable communications are available to outback residents, our governments have discouraged people from settling the inland.

If you were rating the Australian government's mobile and internet performance, you would have to describe it as grossly incompetent and, as Moonie said, 'a cruel joke'.

Four wheel drivers should be leading a revolt to demand better mobile and internet coverage for the Outback.


Michael Secomb
Brisbane



Sent from my GT-P5210 using AULRO mobile app

There is that much traffic on most highways these days that lack of coverage is not that much of an issue, someone will be along soon enough. You can drive from Bunbury to Broome up either of the two bitumen highways and have coverage for 90% of it. If you are going "off piste" then take alternative communications options as you see fit.

In my opinion, Telstra have pretty good regional and remote coverage these days. My sister just drove across the big paddock and was complaining that she had no Optus coverage from Ceduna to Kal. I said change to Telstra then, you'll have coverage pretty much the whole way then .

No phone coverage is an attraction of remote area travel. I loved the ten days we spent in the Kimberley with no coverage at all. It was sad to come over the hill down to the ElQuestro River have have the phone start beeping its head off as it found some coverage again. Welcome back to civilisation .