TWO Mallee towns have scored first dibs on the 66 mobile base stations to be constructed in the first half of this year under the Telstra Mobile Black Spot Programme.
Lalbert and Patchewollock residents rejoiced as last week Telstra announced the first roll out locations for the $165 million project which will realise more than 400 3G and 4G mobile base stations across Australia.
The completion date for Chinkapook’s base station, which was also earmarked in the first round of rollouts, has yet to be released but Telstra said schedules would be made available as planning progresses.
Lalbert’s Frances Mullan said the new base station, expected to be completed by June, would have an huge impact on the lives of local residents, many of whom rely on landline phones to communicate.
“Here at my house you can’t get mobile reception in the house at all,” she said.
“You have to walk all around the house until you find the right spot.”
For Greg Allen, a grain producer near Lalbert, an ongoing landline outage at his farm coupled with existing limited mobile coverage meant he has no reliable phone service for the past two weeks.
“It’s very frustrating in terms of business trying to communicate by text,” Mr Allen said.
For more on this story grab a copy of Monday’s Guardian (February 22, 2016).
