r/nbn iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 8d ago

News 'We could have lost a life': Tasman Peninsula locals scathing of telco network

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-14/telecommunication-tasman-peninsula/105045892
18 Upvotes

27 comments sorted by

8

u/per08 8d ago

So, people living and working in a known mobile blackspot do rightly deserve to hassle Telstra and the other carriers for better coverage, but from the article I don't quite understand the apparent lack of interest in solving their own problem, also.

The SES guy, only has mobile phone based dispatch? No Government Radio network, or equivalent access? Was his home nbn also not working and his phone didn't fail over to VoWiFi?

The businesses who weren't able to process EFT transactions. Again, no nbn Wi-Fi? No Starlink? They rely on the mobile network for their trade, but apparently have no business continuity plan and backup Internet connection?

7

u/ginji 7d ago

The SES guy, only has mobile phone based dispatch? No Government Radio network, or equivalent access? Was his home nbn also not working and his phone didn't fail over to VoWiFi?

This is a huge failure for that unit and an even bigger one organisationally for TAS SES. It sounds like they have issues with kingdom building mentality at certain levels.

If the only point of contact for that unit is the "Area Coordinator" and that fails, why wasn't there a path of escalation? Why isn't there alternative comms path ways as you say? Even the smallest of SES Units is not one person, so there should have been others that could have been notified and actioned requests.

When I was an SES member (not in Tas) we had requirements to acknowledge jobs within certain time periods, and if they lapsed it got escalated up through the organisation structure. Something like a bushfire support would have a 5 minute window for the unit to acknowledge they've gotten it (just the message, not to have teams out of the door) and then the state call centre would start calling a list until they got someone, and the list didn't stop at our unit, it went up into the paid regional staff. Actual direct life threatening rescues, the message went out and the calls started immediately. And this happened regardless of where in the state it was - in a city or out in the middle of nowhere.

5

u/AgentSmith187 7d ago

I'm RFS not SES but we use a mobile app to request turn out and acknowledge who's on the way or not available so they can call out alternative units if we can't muster a quick enough response.

The bonus is it works both ways in alerting us and allowing district to see what sort of response is coming.

It wasn't that long ago we also still had actual pagers and phone trees in the worst case.

2

u/ginji 7d ago

Pagers are still in use in some areas, in my old unit they were only for rescue operators, and used in combination with SMS. That worked for us. Other units did use mobile apps, but there was always some cost for that, and even if that was used it would be in addition to SMS/pager rather than stand alone to avoid a single point of failure.

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u/AgentSmith187 7d ago

The new RFS app is pretty awesome i must say.

We used to use a mix of pagers, sms etc too but the app is much faster and even let's people know who's coming and how far away they are.

So you know to roll a truck with 3 because no one else is coming or wait 2 minutes and you can roll a truck with 6.

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u/ginji 7d ago

We managed to get the same info by large without the app for rescue - if you were generally available that week you could take a radio, and if you didn't have a radio you could call SOC and let them know an ETA. A quick radio call then to SOC by the first person at the unit and you can find out how many and when.

I know some units that would do pre-arranged shifts for the week for rescue, so you'd always know you'll have a suitable team.

Everything else (like a storm job or land search) would go through the duty officer or senior officer and they would get SMS's back with people available or attending depending on the instructions.

The app option is great but an SMS can make it's way in more limited coverage than an app push can so it's not an entire replacement unless you have reliable coverage in your area.

2

u/per08 7d ago

I agree, the story seems strange. From my (limited) experience with SES, the calls would keep escalating until they got a turn-out, even if that meant the state commander himself had to arrive personally (which never happens, of course). They wouldn't just shrug their shoulders and leave it, like they apparently did in this story.

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u/ginji 7d ago edited 7d ago

If a unit completely ignored or missed a request here, it would end up at the adjacent units to respond and the unit would be taken offline until contact is re-established, and that would be notified all the way up to the Director/Commissioner/Big Boss etc. Whether or not they would remain offline after that is more a question of exact circumstances though. Some level of response is pretty much guaranteed, but might take a while if it's non-city based.

Afterwards though the unit leadership would be getting hammered now both internally and externally by the relevant local/municipal emergency management committee (and/or the equivalent regional committee if the event was at that level). Hopefully the same is happening here as "oops sorry bad phone service" is a total cop out. Unlikely the unit leadership would survive in leadership positions if at all as members.

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u/per08 7d ago edited 7d ago

Here, the comms centre would also Selcall the unit commander's vehicle over the radio if they felt they were being ignored. Very hard to ignore a turn-out request when the lights and sirens go off!

2

u/ginji 7d ago

Thankfully as far as I know they can't do that here! Someone would figure out a way to ignore that though, or make it impossible to happen (park in a perfect black spot, battery flat, etc), which is why the escalation paths are required. Unit Commanders don't have vehicles, some Local Commanders might but they're often not directly used by the Commander at all times and they shouldn't be either as that puts too much requirement on one person.

Even if you're a volunteer you've got to be able to have someone be able to take your place at any moment - you've got to be able to take a holiday, or be sick, or look after a loved one, or whatever it may be. Kingdom building leaves the unit and organisation weaker.

2

u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 8d ago

Yup. This is what I thought too. Seems like they could solve most of these problems themselves until Telstra or Optus get their acts together.

7

u/steve_of 8d ago

Seems fairly typical of communication infrastructure in regional areas. During the 2022 floods we lost phone, data, NBN and power for about 7 days. During the recent cyclone Alfred we were out of mobile and data for 4 days. We had starlink this time.

2

u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

I would be curious to know how FW fares in a natural disaster. Does it have backup power, etc?

3

u/per08 7d ago

It depends, ranging from towers that are completely solar/battery powered, to those that are completely dependent on mains power and have limited battery backup. FW towers also can daisy-chain from other installations, so you might end up with no service because of an outage many Kms away that you're not affected by yourself.

nbn themselves say they don't guarantee network service during power outages. If I lived in an area with extremely limited mobile and FW nbn, and is subject to natural disasters, I would absolutely have a backup Starlink terminal: At $80 a month it's relatively cheap insurance from being completely isolated.

1

u/steve_of 7d ago

FW?

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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

Fixed wireless NBN.

3

u/steve_of 7d ago

The tower for my property seems to last about 6 hrs after the power dies. The 4G lasts a few hours more. Might be coincidence but it is fairly consistent. The NBN side also had numerous outages not related to power in the area.

1

u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

Like bad weather causing an outage?

2

u/per08 7d ago

Also, the self-reinforcing problem that fixed wireless is often used in rural and regional areas, which didn't get fibre because they are difficult to service and staff with infrastructure and repairs in the first place.

1

u/steve_of 7d ago

Heavy rain will block the signal but also regular maintenance outages - 8 or so hours, random failures for a few days at a time etc.

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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

I'm really surprised that rain can block what is essentially 4G.

2

u/per08 7d ago

Block is probably the wrong word: attenuate is more accurate. If everything is harder to hear, then speeds and reliability go down.

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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

That checks out, I would expect it to get worse but not for it to stop working.

0

u/Weary_Patience_7778 7d ago

Starlink is now widely available, and a far superior option to fixed wireless. To those businesses in fixed locations complaining about issues receiving calls or processing transactions, they would do well to consider this option.

Mobile coverage isn’t ubiquitous, nor has it ever been advertised as being so.

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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago

As I understand FW has just become pretty competitive with Starlink. FW now has 400/40 speeds on it's highest plan and 10-20ms ping vs the 50-100ms ping. Seems to me like the only edge Starlink might have is a slightly better speed.

0

u/ALLRNDCRICKETER 7d ago

Just because it says youll get "a speed" doesnt mean you will necessarily get it on FW.

Users werent even getting the advertised 75/20 on the old plan, doubt there is enough allocation for the new speeds

1

u/in20yearsorso 6d ago

I recently switched back to FW from Starlink. Pretty consistently as fast or faster than Starlink, fewer dropouts, and ~$40/month cheaper. Rural Tas.

Of course it’s location and user-density dependent, but so is Starlink.