In the submission to the Standing Committee on Broadband in Rural and Regional Communities general manager Warwick Bennett attacked the mobile phone coverage, broadband services and the lack of technicians and service staff in the region.

“The standard of infrastructure and access to telecommunication in this region could at best be described as third world,” Mr Bennett said.

“We only need to travel five minutes out of any of our townships and mobile phone coverage is non-usable.

“Surely in the year 2010 Australia should be able to experience mobile phone coverage between regional centres.

“This does not exist in regional NSW.”

Mr Bennett said the only realistic option for telecommunications in NSW was Telstra, which was focused on profits, not service.

“Our phone accounts continually increase but the service gets worse,” he said

A lack of suitable technicians and service staff meant technicians were contracted from the area, with little idea of the needs or urgency of the issues, let alone the location of the infrastructure, Mr Bennet said.

Inflexible Telstra work practices prevented technicians from correcting problems that they find while attending another fault.

The new problem has to be logged back into the Telstra system then rescheduled for another date and probably another technician.

“It would also appear that Telstra deliberately refuses to replace ageing rural infrastructure, even when asked to do so by its own technicians,” Mr Bennett said.

“After the 2009 Christmas holiday rains, a cable serving much of the area southwest of Mudgee failed when water got through the insulation, interrupting phone service to numerous homes.

“A technician working to repair the problem told a member of Council’s staff that he had been trying to get the cable replaced for years, but had been ignored because the cable only serviced a few dozen rural customers”.