Telstra chose the Friday and Saturday of the Ravensthorpe Wildflower Festival to switch off Hopetoun’s mobile network for planned maintenance.
Businesses were left without EFTPOS connections and volunteers were unable to contact each other by phone.
Festival coordinator Sue Leighton said there had been lots of complaints.
“We haven’t even been able to contact bus drivers who drive for us,” she said.
“It’s been really inconsiderate to do it at this time of year without consultation.”
Ms Leighton said the government considered Hopetoun to be “very remote”.
“Where can you get cash if the FPOS isn’t working? If the post office is closed?” she said.
“You’ve got a 400 km round trip to the nearest bank.”
Shire president Tom Major agreed.
“A bit more consultation would have been good,” he said.
We understand that things need to be maintained and fixed, but the timing has been quite disappointing.
“This is probably one of our biggest weeks of the year tourism-wise with the opening in the Wildflower show.”
Telstra Regional general manager Boyd Brown said they were upgrading the mobile base station that serviced Hopetoun to bring a “better 4G user experience” and preparation for 5G to the community.
“There’s never a good time to undertake this sort of work but once complete it will mean much better mobile services for the local community,” he said.
“Telstra mobile customers connected to the Hopetoun Tower received texts advising of the upcoming work from 8 September, and we advised the local Shire, MPs, Emergency Services and other stakeholders ahead of the works.
“We also posted a notification on social media.”
Mr Boyd said landline services, NBN and satellite internet services, and mobile coverage from other providers was not impacted.
“Telstra customers can continue to make calls and send texts during disruption to mobile services by switching on Wi-Fi Calling,” he said.
“This is a free setting on most popular mobile phones and allows your mobile to make and receive mobile calls while connected to Wi-Fi.
“We also encourage business owners to connect their EFTPOS terminals to their NBN or Wi-Fi connection to prevent delays in processing transactions.”
Mr Boyd warned of “intermittent outages and reductions in performance” while site work was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
