Maleny

businesses suffer because of Telstra!

One doesn’t have to travel too far from Australia’s capitol cities to find Telstra phone blackspot or poorly working Telstra infrastructure.

For some time now Maleny businesses have been suffering because of poor service from Telstra. Not only have phones been not working, or working very poorly, of more concern has been the non-operation of EFTPOS services.

Maleny for a number of years has suffered from poor Telstra service. The 2023 Maleny Wood Expo in May and the Maleny Show on June 2nd and 3rd saw the phone network fail. Maleny businesses and stallholders lost tens of thousands of dollars during those events.

Federal Member for Fisher, Mr Andrew Wallace MP , who attended the Maleny Show said that he had had a lot of concerned residents come to him complaining about the poor Telstra service and delays plaguing the Sunshine Coast Hinterland.

Mr Wallace said that a project is underway to expand the 4G and 5G at the Maleny base station… these upgrades will commence on June 13th and may take up to two weeks to complete. He continued, “New coverage is also coming in the next few months for Beerwah and Booloumba under the Mobile Black Spot Program.” https://issuu.com/Maleny-Grapevine-Community-News with

More than 6,000 locations around Australia have been nominated by members of the public, local councils, community representatives and businesses as having appalling mobile phone reception. Of those locations Queensland has at least 2984 black-spot complaints. Most of those blackspot have been known to Telstra for over a decade with little to no rectification in sight.

Around 1940 home furniture had a distinct style that was popular at the time. This telephone was one of the modern items being slowly introduced into the lounge room.

Since 2018, the Federal Government’s Mobile Black Spot Program has invested $174m towards 250 base stations across Queensland. In the 2022 - 2023 Federal Government “Better Connectivity Plan” $656 million was provided to telecoms with a further $488 million provided to NBN Co to improve mobile and broadband connectivity and resilience in rural and regional Australia. This is part of $2.2 billion dollars to be spent over 5 years.

In spite of all these promises phone reception, both mobile, fixed line and broadband continues to hamper regional and rural communities and their businesses. Whilst no-one should be held back or left behind by lack of access to high-speed broadband that is not the case in not so remote Queensland.