Disruption hits parts of South Australia as Telstra upgrades to 5G

Some locals in a small South Australian town are up in arms and demanding compensation from telecommunications giant Telstra after a rolling network outage disrupted coverage from last week.

Port Pirie businesswoman and Telstra customer Claire Marks, who used to run a fish and chip and pizza shop in the 14,000-strong town, said the outage had disrupted her plans to list her father’s home for sale.

“It’s been a nightmare,” she said.

“The only way I could communicate with the real estate agent was to go into the office and speak to him.

“It just made life difficult, we had to do things in person.

“Little things like trying to sign the authority (for the real estate agent), I couldn’t sign the authority because I couldn’t download the email.”

She said she had heard from several businesses in town who had suffered losses from the outage.

“They did struggle,” she said.

“Some of them mentioned to me they lost business.”

Rnae, a worker at Carpet Court on Ellen St, said the outage had likely “pushed back” business, though she said she couldn’t assign a dollar value to any potential losses.

“We haven’t been able to send out quotes, receive payments, our phone calls haven’t been going through,” she said, adding that her views were her own and not the official position of the business.

“It has irritated customers and it has irritated us.

“And it’s not a great time of year for this to be happening.

“Everyone wants stuff done before Christmas, they want their houses looking pretty for Christmas.”

The outages started last week as Telstra moved to upgrade its mobile site at Port Pirie.

The company is bringing 5G coverage to the region, which Telstra regional general manager Michael Patterson said would deliver faster speeds and higher capacity for customers.

The $44.5bn ASX-listed company notified customers via SMS of the impending upgrade, beginning on November 9, and possible impacts to coverage but some residents claim they did not receive notification beforehand.

Rachel-Bonnie Moyle posted to Facebook a notification message she received from Telstra dated November 14.

Ms Marks said compensation was owed to affected Telstra customers.

“Optus people, they lost service for one day and Optus have compensated them, giving them free internet until the end of the year,” she said.

“Telstra customers have been given nothing, no rebates, no offers of compensation, and it’s been 11 days.”

Briony Masters said she got $30 off her bill after lodging a complaint.

“For anyone with Telstra. Ring and complain about the service disruption. I did and got $30 off my bill,” she said in a social media post.

“Big companies that make huge profits each year, should compensate their customers.”

Mr Patterson said any compensation claims would be considered on a “case-by-case” basis.

“Landline and nbn services were not affected at any stage,” he said.

“Services came back online this afternoon and some final tests and tweaks should be finished by this evening.

“There’s never a good time to undertake this sort of work and we thank everyone for their patience.

“The completed upgrade will now be delivering a much better, faster service for customers in the area.”