DARWIN – A major telecommunications provider has declared a nine-week phone and internet blackout in a remote NT community “substantially restored”, citing a total collapse in customer complaints as key evidence.
The outage, which entered its third month this week, has left residents unable to access Centrelink, banking, My Health Record or triple zero… A spokesperson said the incident had been escalated to a “Tier One Priority Review Working Group” which will meet later this quarter via video link.
“We take remote connectivity extremely seriously,” the spokesperson said. “That’s why we’ve dispatched a strongly worded internal memo and a press release celebrating our commitment to regional Australia.”
Locals said the situation was gammon. One uncle reportedly walked 14 kilometres to the nearest ridge to get a single bar of signal, only to receive a push notification asking him to rate his recent service experience.
The federal Communications Minister’s office was contacted for comment but said any response would need to be workshopped at an upcoming roundtable on digital inclusion, scheduled for some point before Closing the Gap Target 17 expires.
A NIAA representative confirmed the community remained “a key priority” and would feature prominently in the next annual implementation plan, the one after that, and possibly a glossy PDF with a sunset on the cover.
Telstra shareholders were reassured that service reliability metrics for the quarter remain unaffected, as the affected postcodes were quietly reclassified as “aspirational coverage zones”.
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