Leader of The Nationals David Littleproud is calling for Universal Service Obligation (USO) reform, as a mobile phone outage in the Western Downs of Queensland continues to ’cause havoc’.
Mr Littleproud said a full shutdown and outage of mobile phones over the past week and a half is frustrating and worrying locals, due to a Telstra rebuild of the main tower serving Dalby, a town of over 15,000 people.
It is likely to continue until the end of the day on Sunday, June 29.
‘The current mobile phone outage is a serious and even life-threatening issue, because people in need of emergency services cannot make calls right now,’ Mr Littleproud said.
‘There is no obligation for Telstra to work swiftly but if this was happening in a suburb in Sydney, Telstra would have fixed it by now, so it proves the government needs to step in on Telstra.
‘I call on the Labor government to review the USO immediately and extend it to physical phone infrastructure. The Western Downs phone outage proves the need for USO reform. We have had no upgrades in the area – nothing at all – and regional communities deserve better,’ he said.
‘We need reform around the USO, to extend it and use the technology that has evolved, to cover more than 1500 mobile phone towers that were built under the Coalition. Without reform to the USO and a minimum standard for mobile and internet access, lives are at risk every day in regional Australia.’
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