Telstra will temporarily shut down mobile services in parts of Tasmania’s Central Highlands for multiple days to complete critical upgrades that promise to solve ongoing connectivity issues.
The outage will affect communities in Miena, Liawenee, Steppes, Reynolds Neck and Brandum from Monday January 19 until Thursday January 22 during daylight hours.
The upgrades come after more than 100 residents attended a community meeting last November to voice frustrations over mobile service failures they say are endangering lives.
Telstra Regional General Manager for Tasmania Michael Patterson said the upgrades would deliver noticeable improvements for users.
“As data use over our mobile network continues to grow, adding extra 4G capacity to our mobile site in the area will help deliver faster downloads, smoother streaming and less congestion for customers,” Patterson said.
“The work will also make the site ready for a further upgrade to our even faster 5G in the future.”
Telstra has begun notifying customers in the affected areas via text message about the upcoming disruption.
Emergency services access will be maintained during the outage, with any calls to Triple Zero from Telstra mobiles automatically connecting to another available mobile network.
“While disruption is required while the upgrade is underway, we’ll only be switching off the site when we need to and will have it back online and working better than ever as quickly as possible,” Patterson said.
Landline services, NBN connections, satellite internet and mobile coverage from other providers will not be affected during the works.
Telstra say customers can minimise disruption by enabling Wi-Fi Calling, a free setting available on most modern smartphones that allows calls and texts while connected to Wi-Fi.
Telstra has also advised business owners to connect EFTPOS terminals to Wi-Fi connections during the outage period to prevent delays in processing transactions.
