Residents and visitors to Booker Bay and surrounding Ettalong and Orange Grove are experiencing little or no mobile phone and mobile internet coverage in a situation locals say has lasted for several months.
The local shop reports losing many customers because people can not pay using Eftpost or their Apple or Google Pay mobile payments.
Proprietor of the Booker Bay Store Diane Unsworthy said “all the networks are poor or non-existent and this is affecting their ability to pay or simply make a call to family and friends”
Local resident Paul Smedley has been in a long phone and email exchange with Telstra about the issue, though nothing seems to have happened to resolve his problems.
Telstra closed the complaint by sending Mr Smedley this reply email:
‘I regret we’re not able to reach a mutual resolution. Please reply to this email confirming you accept closing of this complaint and that you’d be escalating with your local newspaper…’
Another local resident Ray Shaw runs a technology publishing business from his home at Booker Bay is dismayed by the situation that he says is untenable for a popular established suburb.
“Our local shop has suffered a significant loss to business having gone several days at a time without Telstra mobile coverage, meaning that DoorDash, MenuLog, and EFTPOS machines would not work,” said Ray Shaw.
“While Telstra claims it is switching off 3G support in 2024 things at Booker Bay went from bad to worse from about mid-2022”
Telstra and Optus are reportedly trying to encourage local workarounds by promoting their WiFi Calling service that effectively routes mobile phone calls through the customer’s NBN connection.
However this service is limited to full-paying Telstra and/or Optus customers, and as a result a large part of the population that uses third party services such as Boost, Aldi, Woolworths etc are not adequately serviced.
In related news the decade old mobile phone reception issues at Wagstaffe and Killcare have yet to be resolved, despite a cleared Development Application, federal funding and a high degree of community support.
With mobile network providers transitioning to 5G coverage, it appears the transition so far has failed to deliver in Booker Bay, Wagstaffe and many parts of Ettalong and Killcare.
David Abrahams
My Telstra mobile keeps garbling calls making it very hard to hear. And the phone call often just drops out. This has been going on for some months. I’ve twice reported the issue to Telstra, and the 2nd time, I was told that the problem was the Telstra tower on top of Ettalong Mantra. I’ve applied for a refund of my account fees, as Telstra isn’t supplying the service that I’ve paid for.
I switched to Starlink.
For the $35 extra per month I now have solid and reliable internet.
Our beautiful Aunt who is her 80’s is in tears most days – her phone is her lifeline and she cannot talk to her friends and family and can only text. It’s absolutely disgusting that this has gone on as long as it has. The businesses are suffering – Telstra are not doing anything about it and just keep letting people down and putting customers through hell when they complain. This needs to be fixed- having a reliable phone service in 2022 shouldn’t be that hard. Urgent resolution is required.