Hello? Can you hear me?

Poor mobile coverage is more than annoying – it’s dangerous, writes Philip Comans

“Hello! Hello? Can you hear me ... I can’t hear you... Hello? Hello?” (Under breath: “Bloody useless mobile phone!”)

“I’ll have to call you back .... *#@!!”

For over 22 years, as we’ve lived in beautiful Coalcliff, this has often been the end of a mobile phone call.

We’ve complained, dozens of times, to the mobile phone carriers. We’ve moved from the less expensive Vodaphone to the very expensive Telstra because Telstra claims 99.2% coverage in Australia (who knew Coalcliff would be in the unlucky 0.8%?).

We’ve complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman multiple times. We’ve spent literally hours on the phone with Telstra over the issue. They’ve convinced us to pay $2400 for Telstra Smart Antennas (two, as our first one stopped working after only three years and we negotiated a reduced price of $900 rather than $1500 for its replacement, whoopee!)

Meanwhile, if you visit Africa, or China (or it seems just about any emerging economy), you have perfect reception! Without a person or building in sight! But here, within a major Australian state, we have terrible, patchy, coverage, if any.

This is not just inconvenient, it’s not just bad for running our home-based businesses (although it is both of these things, in spades), it’s not just isolating during the Covid-19 lockdowns, it’s DANGEROUS. It’s a matter of safety.

Over the years we’ve called emergency services for serious accidents in and around Coalcliff, including a fisher’s helicopter rescue (broken femur and took 1.5 hours!), a fatal motorbike accident, and we’ve witnessed recently the helicopter rescue of Dave Winner, where lack of mobile phone signal was, by several accounts, an issue.

I had to run to the Surf Club to summon help for the fisher, while my husband climbed down to the rock shelf with another neighbour he enlisted on the way to help him carry the fisher out of the pounding waves. If we hadn’t, fortunately, seen the accident from our deck he would likely have drowned.

Increasingly, hundreds of visitors enjoy our ocean beach and pool, where lifesavers confirm there is limited mobile coverage. Walkers stream across Sea Cliff Bridge. One neighbour slipped and broke a wrist at the pool. We’ve had visitors knock on our front door, day and late at night, who have run low on petrol, or needed medical help for elderly relatives. Their mobiles useless.

A runaway car ploughed through our garage once. The driver couldn’t call his family.

Apparently, we were close to a solution recently, under the Federal Government’s Mobile Black Spot Program. But bureaucracy got in the way, with Telstra and Wollongong Council failing to agree on a tower location. Massive buck passing.

Don’t get me started on Fire Season. I remember being totally cut off, with power outages, during the 2001 Black Christmas bushfires. Both roads north and south blocked, no landlines, and no mobiles.

Please, if you care about this, visit tio.com.au and complain. Also email and phone Council, and Lee Evans MP and Sharon Bird MP.