In short:
Regional and rural Australians say their ability to make phone calls has dramatically reduced since the 3G network was switched off in October.
Telstra and Optus shut down 3G to boost the 4G and 5G networks, claiming customer coverage would benefit as a result.
What’s next:
The federal government says there may be a need for regulatory intervention if the situation does not improve.
Feels like the natural result of selling off our national infrastructure. Who’d have thunk it.
Well, sort of but not really. Telecom had no 3G infrastructure - it didn’t exist yet when the carrier was privatised.
But, I agree with you in essence that Telecom would not have disabled 3G like this. I also do not think they’d have decommissioned the analogue phone network when they did. Which also affected rural customers at the time.
Yeah I was one of the 3G / NextG subcontractors between Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Broken Hill.
Amps gear was tossed outside the huts and would be collected at an undetermined date.
The original 3G cabinets were not up to spec, so our crew after installing at many locations needed to revisit sites and install amplifiers. What a waste of resources.
Was bad enough having to visit some sites due to their location, but twice was a nightmare. Not to mention every time we made changes on the towers we needed to get in each antennas zone, call 000, confirm molly & scrambling codes. To imagine how many of these “Telstra test calls” they would have been receiving during the rollout, poor bastards.
clearly not us, cause we’ve done it half a dozen times before and almost certainly will do it another dozen times.