Telstra has responded to criticism in the social and mainstream media about interruption to its services over several days in Millicent late last month.

The Telstra equipment is located on the SA Water concrete water tower near Millicent Hospital and some functions had to be shut down when contractors repainted it.

Among other matters, local Telstra critics had been vocal about the lack of warning and the failure to have a temporary transmission tower in place as occurred in 2022.

The SE Voice put these complaints to Telstra and received a statement from its state general manager Michael Patterson.

“Telstra understands how important mobile connectivity is in today’s world,” Mr Patterson said.

“However, there will be times where mobile base stations may go off air due to planned or unplanned events and residents should have in place communication contingencies such as a landline, using Wi-Fi calling or having an EFTPOS machine that can operate using multiple forms of connectivity.

“For planned outages in communities where there is one main base station, where possible Telstra sends residents a text message a few days in advance advising of the upcoming works.

“Unfortunately for the recent outage in Millicent caused by SA Water painting their water tower, a notification was not sent due to human error.

“While it is not something we are required to do, we know that customers do appreciate the heads up and apologise for one not being sent this time.”

Mr Patterson said when SA Water was undertaking maintenance works late last year, their work lasted almost three months and they required Telstra to completely shut down mobile coverage from the site

“For that occasion, Telstra arranged and funded temporary infrastructure to be installed in Millicent while SA Water contractors were onsite,” he said.

“This time, their work was scheduled to take about 10 days and was not going to require a full site shutdown.

“As a result, we were able to just switch off one bank of antennas at a time for three hours, meaning two-thirds of the base station remained operational at all times and full coverage was available from 5pm each day until the following morning.

“Combined with limited availability of a temporary tower at short notice due to them being used elsewhere, it was decided that on this occasion not to deploy a temporary site.

“Landline services, nbn services and mobile coverage from other carriers were not impacted at any stage.

“Telstra again apologises for any inconvenience caused to Millicent residents while our site was off air due to this SA Water site maintenance.”