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School Holidays 2009

Last modified on 2009-05-26 09:51:31 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

I thought this might be useful for families and businesses needing to plan ahead.

The information was from this Australian Travel site (it also has info relating to the other states). If you notice any errors, please let Andy know on the Contact page.

New South Wales School Holidays - 2009

10th April - 27th April

11th July - 26th July

3rd October - 18th October

19th December - 26th January 2010

Appalling Mobile phone service at the Heads

Last modified on 2009-05-26 10:03:57 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Like most people who try to use a GSM mobile phone at Shoalhaven Heads I have just about had enough. Neither of the providers I have tried (Optus and Southern Phone who use the Telstra network) are able to provide us a service that I can acceptably use at our home - if we stand in one spot on tip-toes we can sometimes get a call to last long enough to yell ‘PLEASE CALL ME ON THE LANDLINE!’Now, I know that there are spots around the village where we can get a reasonable signal (you have to laugh at the number of people you see standing outside their houses talking on the mobile - usually with a finger stuck in their ear!). But, with the high cost of local and STD calls from home phones many people would opt for one of the good mobile plans available to make most of their calls - but many can’t as our homes are not in one of the ‘good spots’.

Look, we live in the 21st Century and are only 15 minutes drive from a major regional town in NSW and we can’t make or receive mobile phone calls in most places here! We have a bloody great mountain beside us that presumably blocks the signal (why not put an unobtrusive tower up there I wonder?) from ‘Meroo Meadow’ or wherever the service comes from - in fact, the best place for a signal is on the beach as we can get the signal from Gerroa/Gerringong.

I will be investigating myself what steps that we as customers of these huge companies can do to get an acceptable phone service here in the ‘Heads, but firstly I’d ask you to vote on the latest poll so that we can get some statistics on the service quality that people are getting.

I’ll be more than happy to take this further depending on how many votes we get and what they are!

Edit: I’ve just been advised of an online Telstra form that customers can use to give them ‘feedback’ on their mobile networks. Can I suggest that residents that are also sick of the ’service’ take a few minutes and let them know?
Here’s the link to the Telstra page: (I’ll keep hunting for similar pages on other Telco’s sites!) :

http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/feedback.cfm

Seek (or Google) & you shall find… here’s the Optus feedback form.

Mobile Phone Service cont…

Last modified on 2009-05-26 10:02:01 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Edit Aug’08 :

Has anybody else in the ‘Heads noticed an improvement in the GSM service from Telstra? We are now able to hold a conversation if we sit in the lounge of our place without calls dropping out - amazing! I can’t take any credit for this interesting development but I have heard that the NextG service power levels have been turned down a notch as it was interferring with the GSM service in some areas. Maybe the reason…Well, my endeavours to try to get something done about our mobile phone ’service’ here at the ‘Heads hasn’t borne any fruit. You might be interested in this reply we finally received from Telstra:

‘Telstra’s primary mobile technology in Shoalhaven Heads is Next G which provides good coverage in the township and surrounds. We also have GSM technology in the area but it is mainly for the Princes Highway with any coverage in Shoalhaven Heads considered fortuitous. Telstra has no plans to extend the GSM coverage footprint outside the urban centres however we are only one of several carriers who have GSM networks. These carriers may want to improve their mobile presence in the Shoalhaven Heads area.. ‘

So, essentially what they are saying is this - they want us all to switch to Next G and because of this, they have no interest in improving their GSM service coverage to the ‘Heads. They are also saying that they never actually provided GSM coverage to Shoalhaven Heads - any coverage we got was just ’spillover’ from the Princes Highway cell towers. Ok - if that is so, then why does their coverage map for GSM state that we are in the ‘green zone’ (ie: good coverage)? Try it yourself - here’s Telstra’s Coverage page (choose GSM / 3G).

Well, so now we are left with two mobile phones that are useless for making or receiving calls around the house - we’ll just retain them for emergency use when we are out and use VOIP (voice over internet) for all our calls, to mobiles or otherwise. Our phone company (Southern Phone - who we are very happy with in every other respect) won’t get hardly a cent from us for calls. I guess they aren’t too happy about that, but they are reselling Telstras ’service’ and if we can’t use it then that’s not our fault is it?

My advice to others is to do as we did - complain, loudly to as many organisations as you can. You probably won’t get anywhere but at least your concerns will add to the growing unrest!