In June 2021, October 2021, and most recently 13 and 22 February 2024, severe weather events brought down tens of thousands of trees across the Dandenong Ranges, resulting in prolonged power outages. Mobile telecommunication towers, reliant upon battery backups in the event of electricity outages, lost all communications when the batteries ran out of their reserves.
This resulted in tens of thousands of people without the capacity to make any phone calls or receive data, including many who could not make triple zero calls.
We call upon the below-named private telecommunications companies to invest in stronger resilience measures in their mobile telephone infrastructure.
By signing this petition, we hereby call upon Telstra, Optus, TPG & Vodafone to:
Improve mobile coverage across the Dandenong Ranges and eliminate ‘blackspots’.
Take steps to deliver more resilient infrastructure to ensure that mobile telecommunications are maintained during prolonged power outage periods and restore coverage faster where coverage is lost.
