"That ICPA Qld raises awareness with its communications stakeholders to ensure their services and infrastructure receive repairs, and general and preventative maintenance as a priority in regional and remote areas prior to seasonal weather conditions.”
The recent North Queensland Flooding and Monsoon event highlighted many failures in the provision of communications services to regional and remote areas, particularly those that have a wet season that restricts access to infrastructure to conduct repairs, general and preventative maintenance. The mobile tower in the township of Gregory had a known issue with its batteries not holding charge/requiring replacement. Who here thinks going into a Wet Season (with cloudy weather) that the communications provider should have replaced these batteries as priority? At the onset of the rain event not only did that mobile network fail but also many poorly maintained landlines in the Gregory, Burketown, Mt Isa and surrounding Shires. This left distance education students with no phone lines and Boarding School students unable to contact their parents unless the parents were within range of a NBN Sky Muster Service that still had power and connectivity.
This was a particularly distressing situation for many of our own branch members during evacuations. We have another distance education family who has gone without a landline for over 3 months because the repairs were not prioritised for completion whilst that property still had road access. We need repairs, general and preventative maintenance carried out in isolated areas as a priority, prior to seasonal weather conditions, as access to the infrastructure is also impeded during these times.
