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Telstra services in over forty areas in NSW have been affected by the bushfires raging throughout the country.
Carey Withey, the NSW media manager for legal and corporate affairs at Telstra, made the announcement via a Telstra blog post.
“A number of Telstra services have also been affected and our teams are working to restore them as quickly as possible. In some cases, adverse conditions are preventing us from reaching some areas but we will attend as soon as it’s safe to do so,” Withey said.
The areas in which Telstra customers may have lost service include:
- Bellangry;
- Bowraville
- Burrell Creek
- Comara
- Coopernook;
- Coraki
- Doon Doon
- Elands
- Emmaville
- Failford
- Fernhill
- Forster
- Glen Innes
- Glenreagh
- Hallidays Point
- Harrington
- Huonbrook
- Jackadgery
- Koorainghat
- Laurieton
- Macksville
- Marlee
- Moorland
- Newton Boyd
- Nimbin
- Nymboida
- Old Bar
- Port Macquarie
- Rappville
- Red Range
- Rollands Plains
- Southbank
- Taree
- Taylors Arm
- The Channon
- Tingha
- Tinonee
- Toorooka
- Toronto
- Torrington
- Wandsworth
- Wherrol Flat
- Yarras, and
- Yarrowitch.
In order to address service outages felt by business and residential customers in these affected areas, Withey also outlined an assistance package for short-term and long-term measures.
The relief packages for short-term measures, requiring a temporary evacuation of a premises or a temporary fault allow for free use of Telstra public payphones and Telstra Air payphone Wi-Fi hotspots and a free call diversion service from affected home or business phones to other fixed or mobile services regardless of carrier for up to the date when network damage is repaired or up to three months for evacuated customers.
If users divert a phone service to a Telstra mobile service, they will be able to make local and national (or STD) calls at fixed-line rates), while Telstra mobile customers not on a Telstra home phone plan can access a one-off credit of $100.
Meanwhile, long-term measures for those who receive severe damage to total loss of a premises will have free call diversion from a fixed-line Telstra service to another fixed-line or mobile service, regardless of carrier for up to six months from the date of a fire and access to a $500 credit for a fixed-line service to cover costs if Telstra needs to connect a fixed-line phone service a temporary residence or to reconnected a fixed-line at the customer’s original permanent premises.
“Customers who have had to evacuate their home or have lost their home are encouraged to call us [on] 132 203 (then enter their full home phone number including area code when prompted) to report a fault and register for the assistance package,” Withey added.
