Goulburn's Stewart Thompson calls for better NBN, telco service

He and wife Jane's home phone and internet has been out for two weeks since a large storm hit the area. The mobile phone is their lifeline but reception is patchy around their house on Goulburn's western outskirts.

If that's not bad enough, rectifying what he initially thought was an NBN fault has been something of a 'nightmare.'

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'My issue is the Telstra network is not good enough to support the NBN and there is no simple way of getting them to come and look at the problem," Mr Thompson said.

"There are more people like me and many of them are worse off. If you don't keep checking, the wheels will come off."

Mr Thompson said that once upon a time, Goulburn had a training facility for telecommunications technicians and they were readily available when called. But most of these public service positions had since gone.

Now they're scattered across Sydney, Canberra or "wherever" and take weeks to respond to customer requests, he says.

"They say it's more efficient but it's not efficient for us," Mr Thompson said.

"Goulburn used to have PMG (Post Master Generals department) training here in the 1970s. Now if you walk through the State office block (in Auburn Street), the jobs are not there. They are all public service jobs that have withered away," he said.

"People are referred to call centres and often have trouble understanding accents. I'm sure they are intelligent people but communication is a problem. It's timely that politicians account for the jobs stripped out of Goulburn."

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Mr Thompson argued the council should be livid and Hume MP Angus Taylor outraged with the level of telecommunications customer care in rural and regional areas.

He initially contacted his provider, TPG, which could not advise when NBN technicians would arrive or from where. Nor did NBN have a customer service guarantee surrounding a timeframe to deal with problems.

A technician finally arrived on Wednesday, 13 days after Mr Thompson advised NBN of the outage. The technician advised it was not the line at fault, but the modem, which would need to be replaced.

An NBN spokesman said the first available appointment was scheduled after Mr Thompson advised it of his issue.

"The technician attended the customer's premises and found that the modem was faulty and they were able to test to the first socket with a test modem and the service was working well," he said.

"We have escalated to request that the retail service provider assists the customer by supplying a new modem."

The spokesman told The Post that NBN Co recently encountered a new workforce scheduling system introduced in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.

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"NBN Co apologises to customers who have been inconvenienced by the recent delays relating to our workforce scheduling system and the availability of field technicians in recent weeks," the spokesman said.

"The company has increased the number of field technicians in metropolitan and regional areas and is working hard to complete all pending connection and service orders as soon as possible."

Local technicians were employed wherever possible to ensure areas were properly serviced. There are two full time ones in Goulburn.

The corporation aims to complete new connections within nine days and service requests within two business days. While its capacity to do this had returned to "more normal levels," as at June 24, NBN Co had 4600 customers who had been waiting more than seven days to have problems rectified.

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Service faults at individual premises were generally restored within 3.3 days but NBN Co was working to reduce this to two days on average, the spokesman said.

Meantime, the company postponed an event at The Goulburn Health Hub on June 29 and 30 to explain more about its business fibre zones to the community.

It plans to hold it in coming weeks, subject to the lifting of COVID travel and event restrictions.

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