By Callum Ludwig
An Upper Yarra resident has been left frustrated and annoyed following an outage to his landline service through Telstra.
Three Bridges resident Peter Dunn, responding to the Star Mail via email after over a week of difficulty making any contact over the phone from his home, has been without his phone or internet service at his home since Tuesday 15 October.
Mr Dunn said on that day he went over to his neighbour’s place and with difficulty, because he wasn’t on his phone, managed to get through to Telstra to advise of his problem.
“They booked a service call for that Thursday but no one turned up, when I rang Telstra again they advised that the problem wasn’t with my phone but the pit located at Howells Road in Gilderoy, they advised that someone would fix the problem in a couple of weeks,” he said.
“When I called back after this didn’t happen I was advised that the problem had been scheduled for repair on 14 November, they did ask me if I wanted an interim mobile phone which I received a couple of days later,”
“This phone was configured to replace my land line and therefore needed to be kept inside so that I could receive calls however as the mobile phone signal is so weak their phone does not receive a signal inside so it is pretty much useless.”
Mr Dunn has had to travel to the Yarra Junction Library in order to access his emails during the outage.
Mr Dunn said he relies on his landline because the mobile phone coverage at his home is so poor.
“To make a call I have to be outside and I have to be standing in the right spot or the line drops out, people effectively can’t call me as the mobile phones don’t work inside the house, so it is a case of don’t call me, I’ll call you,” he said.
“The mobile phone might work better if I still had the internet but that is dead also, the fact that the internet is dead means I cannot access my emails or do my internet banking, fortunately the only bill outstanding is Telstra’s, so they can wait for that,”
“Last year a land owner dug up the phone line and it only took a week to fix so I do not understand why this is taking a month, this is exceedingly frustrating but Telstra has obviously marked this as low priority.”
Mr Dunn noticed a frame had been put around the problem pit on Friday 8 November, which was removed by Monday 11 November, but after checking with Telstra again had been advised the repair was still set for Thursday 14 November.
Telstra Regional General Manager Jenny Gray said suspected cable damage is disrupting a small number of landline services in Powelltown.
“Mobile, nbn and other broadband services are not affected,” she said.
“We’re working to get these services back online as quickly as possible and we thank everyone for their patience.”
