Two Byron Shire residents have spoken out publicly about what they say is rotten service from national telco Telstra.
George Lewin last week had a letter published in The Echo complaining of appalling and incompetent service, saying he’s had far better mobile phone and internet connection in the jungles of northern Thailand and Myanmar than he currently has in Montecollum.
Mr Lewin says his Byron Shire Telstra service drops out up to fifteen times a day when trying to make or receive calls, or abruptly kills the audio of one or both parties.
He shared a photo with The Echo of the physical antics he says he must execute in order to attempt a decent phone call connection.
The frustrated customer has launched a change dot org petition called Rotten Telstra service in Byron Bay that had attracted 34 signatures by Tuesday morning.
Mr Lewin says he will eventually take the petition to Federal and State politicians, and to the telecommunications industry ombudsman to demand better service.
‘Perhaps we’re at the bottom of the list,’ wonders Telstra customer
Speaking to The Echo on Monday, Mr Lewin said he finally ‘spat the dummy’ with internet service provider NBN ‘six or seven months ago’ after a series of outages, both scheduled and unscheduled.
He says he bought his property thirty years ago and used to have better reception.
The line ‘never dropped’ in 1995, Mr Lewin said.
He later invested in wireless technology via NBN with a dish on his roof ‘after Telstra dismantled ADSL,’ he said.
But when asked what he thought had changed, Mr Lewin lay the blame at the feet of ‘more bright, young’ people working at the telcos involved, Telstra and NBN, who he said were more qualified in graphic design and other modern corporate aspirations than service.
He also wondered if Telstra was hesitant to invest in improved services in the Byron Shire owing to recent suspected vandalism of one of its towers, in Mullumbimby.
‘Perhaps we’re at the bottom of the list’, he wondered aloud of the Byron Shire in terms of Telstra services.
Driven to Starlink out of frustration
Either way, he had essentially given up, in his own words, recently buying a Starlink dish, despite disliking the company’s founder.
The investment had ‘fixed the internet completely’, he said.
But his phone call issues remained, despite trying to make them through his new dish.
In neighbouring Myocum, slightly further down the steep hllls towards the valley, tertiary educator Dr Anne Chesher voiced the same concerns.
Dr Chesher couldn’t yet bring herself to switch to Starlink, she said, not least of all because she wanted badly to invest in an Australian company.
The SAE senior lecturer said she consistently had issues with her NBN/Telstra internet service, despite NBN having upgraded local equipment.
Connection losses threatening business as usual
She described having had no internet service all day Sunday 15 February through until around five pm.
Neither her regular internet service nor her Telstra ‘hot-spotting’ service would work, she said.
Later that afternoon her partner, the account holder, received an automated text from one of the telcos advising all was ‘good to go’, as she paraphrased.
But there was no explanation for the disruption, she said.
Her partner was on the phone to Telstra ‘almost weekly,’ she told The Echo, with her phone service being ‘spasmodic’.
Had the disruptions occurred on a day when the work-from-home educator needed to be working, the impacts would have been serious: classes would have been cancelled, Dr Chesher said.
‘Post-Covid my work is so dependent on the internet,’ she said.
Dr Chesher said she had ‘spread’ online links to Mr Lewin’s petition out far and wide through all her community groups, including her book club.
The Echo sent both customer complaints to Telstra and NBN with a request for comment.
An NBN media spokesperson said the company had just finished its fixed wireless upgrade program in the area and asked for more information about the individual cases, promising to speak with the customers directly.
Telstra did not reply by publishing deadline.
It’s understood Byron Shire Mayor Sarah Ndiaye, meanwhile, has recently been in communications with Telstra about community concerns in the aftermath of 3G technology removal from the national system.
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