Phones across western Cape York down again
Telecommunications across western Cape York have suffered another outage this morning just hours after services were restored following a bushfire which crippled the network over the weekend.
Telecommunications on western Cape York experienced another outage this morning, just hours after services were restored following a bushfire that crippled the network over the weekend. Businesses and community leaders are demanding better telecommunications solutions in the region. Telstra's Northern Queensland general manager, Rachel Cliffe, stated that the latest issue was caused by a secondary power-related fault at one of Telstra's sites, resulting from the infrastructure damage caused by the bushfire.
Some larger sites have more power backups compared to smaller ones, which are designed based on the power requirements needed to prevent outages. Telstra apologized for the secondary fault, which saw mobile phone reception disrupted in towns such as Weipa, Mapoon, Aurukun, Mission River, Napranum, and Rocky Point for nearly 30 hours.
The outage occurred after the initial bushfire-induced disruption lasted almost 30 hours, affecting customers unable to make any calls, including emergency calls to Triple Zero (000), from Saturday evening until last night. Cliffe defended the restoration efforts, explaining that technicians needed to be deployed from Cairns to repair substantial damage to infrastructure, including replacing large lengths of optic fiber.
Local businesses, like Weipa Campground, faced significant challenges due to the loss of internet services, impacting their ability to manage bookings and guest information. The campground manager, Angela Burr, resorted to manual methods to keep the business operational, even setting up Starlink, which took time to become fully active.
The Mapoon community, located approximately 80 kilometers north of Weipa, was also impacted by both outages. The shire's CEO, Chad King, expressed concern over the lack of alternative services, as the community relied solely on a single phone tower, making it a single point of failure. King emphasized the need for more resilient telecommunications in remote areas, as the community had become heavily dependent on such services.
Written by urgent.news from ABC News AU's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
