Pambula, Lochiel and Nethercote customers suffering third internet outage in less than three months

Around 60 services in the Pambula and Nethercote area lost internet access on Christmas Day and according to Telstra's estimates will not get it back again until 7pm on January 10, some 17 days later.

It follows an eight day outage in November and an outage for a couple of days in late October.

In the absence of fibre to anything, or even fixed wireless NBN services which require a line of sight connection, these customers have relied on Telstra's ageing ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) service for internet access. But the latest outage, particularly over the holiday period, has created anger and frustration in the community.

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The service went down in the afternoon of Christmas, reappeared briefly for an hour or two on Boxing Day, only to disappear once again.

The Nethercote and Lochiel community chat room has been on fire over the issue with residents furious over lack of information and the continual loss of service.

ADSL was a child of the 1990s and Telstra has said it won't be upgraded and will eventually be retired.

However Telstra still offers it as a service where there is no fixed wireless NBN access such as Nethercote, Lochiel and parts of Pambula.

With more than 25 days of outage in less than three months, community members have sought credits for their monthly bills, something that has not proved always proved straightforward.

If you lose service ring the 13 22 00 complaints line and register your outage with Telstra immediately. They will give you a reference number relating to your call which you can use should a credit not be applied to your bill. Credits can take up to three months to implement.

If you do not call to register the outage, Telstra may claim they know nothing about your outage and refuse to give a credit.

If you are in a rural area with no access to fixed wireless NBN then apart from ADSL, choices are limited to mobile internet or satellite - either Sky Muster or Starlink.

Telstra is encouraging people to try out mobile internet - that's a service via the local mobile tower. In regional areas speed and quality of connection can be issues.

Anyone with a mobile phone may be able to hot spot to their computer (depending on data allowance) to test out how it would work for them.

Sky Muster is the NBN satellite; it has not always enjoyed great reviews and Starlink is the Elon Musk-owned satellite communications business.

While Sky Muster has unmetered off peak data allowances between midnight and 4pm, the user must work out how much data they are likely to need in the peak 4pm-midnight time, per month to decide which package to choose. One local commented that it was "too complicated".

Starlink is unmetered, has lower lag time (latency) because the Starlink satellites are in closer orbit to earth, whereas Sky Muster is geostationary (in the same place with respect to location, higher and covering a wider areas).

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However satellites such as Sky Muster and Starlink can be affected by weather. They can, like any service, be affected by congestion. There are only so many users who can access a service relying on a predetermined bandwidth, before it reduces in speed.

Sky Muster has some service level guarantees in place which state that peak services will not drop below certain speeds.

Starlink has no customer service facility and the satellite dish installation is DIY or via a local installer. All contact with the company is online. Starlink offers higher speeds than Sky Muster but at a higher price.

For regional customers without access to terrestial-based NBN and who want improved reliability and speeds for their internet, the answers aren't straightforward and depend on personal priorities and preferences.

In December 2022, the federal government issued a statement of expectations for NBN Co via its shareholder ministers, Minister for Finance Senator Katy Gallagher and Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland. It included a commitment to improving connectivity for regional and remote Australians.

The government wants to ensure at least 660,000 premises in regional and remote Australia are included in the commitment to expand full-fibre access to a further 1.5 million premises.

If this is achieved, then some pressure can be taken off the existing services being accessed by those users, freeing them up for Australians who are currently on slower services.

The government also said NBN Co should implement upgrades to provide all premises in the fixed wireless network with access to wholesale download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second and typical wholesale busy hour speeds of at least 50 megabits per second.

The statement of expectations said the Sky Muster satellite service should be improved to provide wholesale monthly data allowances to an average at least 90 gigabytes per month on completion of the fixed wireless upgrade.

The government wants NBN Co ensure at least 80 percent of premises in regional and remote Australia have access to wholesale download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second by 2025.

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