Keeping the Phones Working !

We have just had one of the worst bushfire summers on record and one of the things that contributed to the anguish was the failure of the telephone system.   Both landline and the mobile network went down at that critical time that people needed to report fires and receive instructions to evacuate.  We are warned that global warming will ensure that future fire seasons extend well outside the normal seasonal parameters.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority review of the impact on communication networks found a total of 888 separate  outage incidents of four hours or more.  Of these New South Wales accounted for the majority with 681 incidents of which most were caused by lack of electric power.  Only one percent can be attributed to direct fire damage.

The government is spending $18 million to strengthen mobile base stations to deal with loss of power in a bushfire because this critical need must continue in future emergencies.   Base stations need backup power if the mains fail and this can take the form of either batteries or generators.  We have the technology to automate the system so that this comes on line automatically the moment the main power fails.

The fact that last bushfire season we had one thousand phone towers knocked out contributed to loss of life and loss of property.  The average length of outage was 3.5 days, but even in normal times there are many areas of the state that exist with no mobile phone coverage, making residents particularly vulnerable in the fire season.

We are on the cusp of 5G and yet parts of the state with significant population numbers exist in what are called " black spots " out of range of phone towers or with unusual features that preclude coverage.  It is time these were eliminated and if necessary satellites may have to be deployed to ensure the entire state is covered.

Last summer's fire season must not be allowed to happen again because of a communications failure.  We had a fleet of fire trucks backed up by aircraft dropping retardant fighting the blaze.  Individual residents were in many cases left to make their own decisions whether to stay or evacuate because the critical information issued by the Rural Fire Services was simply not getting through.

There is every expectation that the main power lines will be a casualty in the fire season.  It is essential that at least the mobile network is backedup with emergency facilities to keep it working when the power goes down.  The technology exists to make that happen.  We can not claim to be a modern nation until that is put in place.