Bushfire-affected residents in Nymboida grapple with Optus’ telecommunication failures

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When bushfires hit the northern New South Wales community of Nymboida in October, it was left without one of the most vital survival tools — a mobile phone service.

“No phone connection, no text connection, nothing,” said Nymboida resident Annie Wolff.

The problem persisted for nearly five days. 

Ms Wolff was an hour away from her Nymboida home, caring for her grandchildren in Grafton, when an emergency level bushfire threatened the remote community on Sunday, October 22.

When she tried to call her husband at home, she could not get through. 

“I couldn’t contact him. He couldn’t contact me,” Ms Wolff said.

The intensity of the fire meant she was unable to return to her Nymboida home, which the couple was rebuilding after it was destroyed during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires

Ms Wolff’s husband, Allan Mulligan, said the communications outage from the October fire left him vulnerable, once again, during the emergency.

“Something could happen and you wouldn’t know. I’m on my own and no one [would] know until it’s too late, probably,” he said.

A burnt out ute with a burnt forest in the background

Mr Mulligan said they were lucky the damage to their property was minimal this time. (ABC Coffs Coast: Samantha Aishia)

The blaze burnt through more than 12,000 hectares and cut power to the Optus tower in Nymboida.

Residents say Optus is their main provider, with all those living on Glens Creek Road depending solely on the  tower. 

As a result of the outage, Ms Wolff was left relying on short updates from residents who were able to leave the fire ground in search of mobile reception.

“It was progressively distressing … everybody relies on this Optus tower. It is our only source of communications,” she said.

Similar to events in 2019, the couple and other Nymboida residents were forced to defend their homes without the support of Rural Fire Service alerts or triple-0 calls.

Left in the dark 

Optus installed a generator on Tuesday, October 24, to restore power to the tower.

But Nymboida residents Daniel Evans and Ros Cooper said the generator was unsuccessful. 

Asked about residents’ concerns with the generator, Optus said its technicians discovered further damage to the tower that had negatively impacted its power. 

It confirmed services were restored on Saturday October 28, five days after communications had failed.

“Optus is committed to delivering the best possible network connection for customers,” Optus local general manager Chris Simon said.

“We apologise to any customers who have been impacted by the incident.”

A generator next to a mobile phone tower

The generator failed to restore telecommunications to Nymboida.(Supplied: Daniel Evans)

But a week after communications had been restored, communications were again lost on Friday, November 8. 

Mr Evans travelled to the mobile phone tower to investigate, not knowing a national Optus outage had caused the loss of communications.

Upon arriving at the tower he found the generator was still connected to the tower, but a burnt tree had fallen on it.

‘Stopgap’ measures not good enough

Shortly after the fire threat had passed in Nymboida, Optus unveiled nine mobile SatCat power units that would provide a temporary solution during emergency situations by using satellite transmissions.

But federal Member for Cowper Pat Conaghan said the units would not go far enough.

“They’re all stopgap measures. What we need are towers and … government investment,” he said.



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