In this day and age landline phones, internet access and even mobile phone service is a basic and critical utility, necessary to get on with every day life, although for Manilla residents those services have become somewhat of a luxury.
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Over the last seven months residents of the small town have encountered numerous issues on an almost weekly basis. The biggest of these has left the town cut off from all mobile service for more than two weeks, while a few other outages have lasted for days, with landline, mobile and internet services all affected.
For some citizens it is inconvenient to say the least, for some businesses it has been extremely costly financially, for some services it could soon prove deadly, and overall it is unacceptable in this day and age, especially considering the costs of these services in regional areas.
Tamworth councillor Jim Maxwell and Manilla Action Group chairman Paul Adnett have both flagged concerns about paramedics and other emergency services - who are becoming more and more reliant on these networks for their communications – being unable to contact each other or receive calls from people in need.
How long before someone has a heart attack, or is crushed in a stockyard, or any other number of incidents that happen daily in regional communities, and is unable to call for help.
What will Telstra say then? Will the problem be fixed in seven to 10 days?
I wonder what the people of Manilla, Tintinhull, Dungowan, Walcha Road – and all the other small towns, communities and even regional cities where this lack of service has unfortunately just become a part of life – think about the three-part sell-off of the company that effectively controls the entire communications infrastructure and market of the entire nation.
The Federal Government might have pocketed billions of dollars by the time they’ve finally sold off all but 17 per cent of a company that was already generating billions in revenue. But what will have been truly lost? What will be the real cost of that mistake, a mistake Australians will continue to bear the brunt of every time they find that they can’t call family, friends or, crucially, even the emergency services.
As for the great NBN roll-out that was going to end all of our problems and quell the fear that Australia was lagging behind the rest of the world – we’re only now just getting a taste.
