Behind Braidwood’s historic facades there is some pretty historic telephony. Fifteen years into the 21st century, many people in the Braidwood district do not even have a workable telephone line to their house. In Araluen one house has not had a phone line since December last year, let alone mobile reception. There are many tales of woe.
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Ageing infrastructure and a stormy summer season have compounded the problem as Telstra technicians have had a backlog of jobs.
Uncertainty over the timeline of the promised NBN is another factor. Should Telstra bother to fix the aging network if it is to be outdated in the near future?
In Braidwood town over Easter, the mobile telecommunications were overburdened by swelling tourist traffic, to the extent that even sending a text could take hours. Some businesses had Eftpos trouble.
It’s not just annoying; it is very costly to businesses and individuals when basic communications are out. There is also the paramount issue of safety: when accidents, medical emergencies, fire or flood occurs, the lack of coverage can be fatal.
Gordon Waters, of Highgate IT in Duncan Street, sees the issues every day.
“Our coverage and capacity in this area are just not good enough. Even in Braidwood, Telstra says we have 4G but we don’t. There just isn’t enough capacity in the ADSL network, or the mobile broadband.”
The problems are on several levels of service. Gordon has summarised the internet issues in and around Braidwood but says it’s “not a complete list.”
With ADSL: there is a lack of ADSL2 / 2+ in Braidwood, there is congestion of ADSL service elsewhere for example Majors Creek / Ballalaba, and there is a lack of ADSL availability in Mongarlowe /Araluen and other areas due to pair gain or distance from exchange or quality of phone lines.
In telephony, pair gain is a method of transmitting multiple POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service: voice-grade telephone service employing analog signal transmission over copper loops) signals over the twisted pairs traditionally used for a single traditional subscriber line in telephone systems. Pair gain has the effect of creating additional subscriber lines.
With Mobile Data: there is a lack of reliable service, unusable data transfer speeds (ie too slow to be functional) and a lack of 4G / 4GX (even though Telstra maps show it is available.
With Satellite: there is a lack of reliable service, and unusable data transfer speeds.
Gordon sites many cases where the substandard service is a problem; a satellite user who cannot download Windows & Security updates / attachments, a Member of the RFS and cannot receive official correspondence via email, having to bring a laptop to Braidwood regularly just to get updates, a Home Business user relying on Telstra mobile broadband cannot download email attachment or send business invoices by email.
In other cases a potential new resident to Braidwood is uncertain if they can move here due to lack of reliable mobile communications and a work at Home Mechanical design engineer unable to upload completed 3D drawing via current Satellite service has to bring laptop to Braidwood to connect to and ADSL2 service to upload plans.
Many satellite users are simply unable to download security and windows updates, which has the potential to leave them open to security vulnerabilities.
Many users are unable to pick up ABC Radio stations and are turning to online stations which compound to the problem in high data uses, but also because of the current status of the mobile broadband are unable to stream these stations.
Just about everyone has a problem somewhere, whether it’s home phone, internet, mobile, before we even begin on the issue of lack of radio reception.
All in all it’s costing Braidwood district residents and businesses time and money, all overlayed by safety issues. We should expect more in 2015.
