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Local business leader thanks "proactive" Telstra ahead of upgrades

By Myles Peterson

Sep 30, 2021

Telstra is to be congratulated for taking a proactive approach to its latest round of planned upgrades and outages, according to Kyabram Chamber of Commerce President Dee Stagg.

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The upgrades previously scheduled for late July were cancelled due to the then COVID-19 lockdown.

Telstra has alerted that next Monday morning works to the local mobile tower will see intermittent outages to the telecommunications company’s mobile network.

“(Telstra) called me to alert our members to the planned disruption,” Ms Stagg said.

“I’m happy that they’re taking this approach and we can be prepared this time round.”

Mobile service disruptions in June caused widespread anguish for mobile users and businesses reliant on the network to operate devices such as EFTPOS machines, according to Ms Stagg.

A spokesperson for Telstra said the company was taking a more proactive approach this time around.

“We know there was an impact to local businesses when we upgraded the 4G and 5G services, so that’s why we are keen to be proactive this time. However, Monday’s work will be far less disruptive,” the spokesperson said.

“We have been told it will only take four hours to do the work, but rather than turning off the tower entirely, we will be just turning off parts of it at a time so there will still be some coverage.”

SMS-alerts to Telstra customers in the region stated the disruptions could occur over four days from Monday to Thursday, however the spokesperson said that four day window was only a precaution in case the works were delayed by weather events or other interruptions.