Former candidate for the seat of New England Rob Taber was in Deepwater on Tuesday evening and joined around 32 residents concerned about a significant decrease in adequate mobile phone reception over previous years.
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Deepwater Telstra customers were struggling for a single bar of service during the meeting, attended by North West regional manager Michael Marom.
“It is an issue that has been around for some time,” Mr Taber said.
“Pretty well when you are 20km out of Glen Innes until you get about 10km out of Tenterfield it is on and off all the time.”
Mr Marom attended the meeting to respond to complaints from local mobile users and said he would investigate the possibility that transmitting towers may be out of alignment and that significantly increasing annual data usage rates could be contributing to congestion issues.
“We want to make sure we have continuity of coverage. I know that there are quite a few spots where there is no coverage and it is challenging because you have very large areas with very little in them and then you have challenging topography like Mount Gibraltar,” he said.
“It is extremely difficult to have a consistent and stable mobile service when you have such topography. Mobile signal is a line of sight transmission and it needs to have that height and capacity that is why in buildings where there are challenging areas it becomes quite difficult.”
The weak, and in some cases non-existent mobile signal even in the Deepwater township has proven to be an isolating factor a number of residents.
Mr Taber said in a world reliant on modern communications technology, a mobile signal was near essential.
“We did a survey here and we sent out 400 questionnaires to the Deepwater community and the surrounding district and we got 220 responses saying that they believe it is a major problem,” he said.
“To get that many responses from any survey, which is over 50 per cent, I think is incredible.
“It is not just about phone service anymore. We have moved so far today and we need to now have a fast internet speed. It is how we live. One goes with the other.
“If we can’t replace it with a decent mobile signal, then we are not even half way there. We have really got to get this sorted.”
Mr Taber said the federal government had made commitments to allocate around $100 million to address mobile black spots and he was keen to see some funds directed to Deepwater, and regional New England area.
“There are a couple of options, but at the end of the day something has got to happen. We can’t just it back and say it’s tough, we live in Deepwater. It’s unacceptable,” he said.
