There’s enough technology to launch a rocket on Queensland’s tropical north coast, but 100 kilometres down the road residents can’t reliably make phone calls or send emails.
“I can be just 50 metres from the tower and I get nothing,” Collinsville resident Mark McDonald said.
The 69-year-old pensioner said he struggled to make phone calls from home despite living a few streets from the town’s only mobile phone tower.
He said poor phone and internet connection was not a new problem but one that had become increasingly worse for the town’s 4,000 residents.
Mark McDonald says despite living within sight of a mobile tower, he often struggles to connect to it. (Supplied: Sue Clarke)
Mr McDonald said the fluctuating workforce throughout the day at the nearby coal mine exacerbated the connectivity issues, making simple web browsing difficult.
“The several hundred workers, they knock off on their shifts and they come home and they want to say g’day to the family or Google something,” he said.
“The data load becomes enormous, and the tower doesn’t cope.”
Mike Brunker is a long-serving former mayor of the Whitsunday Regional Council, which takes in Collinsville.
He said 4G reliability in the area was “absolutely ridiculous”.
“If there’s a wash plant shutdown, or a drag line shut down, you could have double [the demand] out there, with the amount of contractors,” he said.
“[If] people are wanting to send an email or even a simple message, try again and try again.”
Space-age satellites
But 90km north at Abbot Point it’s a very different story of connectivity, where Gilmour Space Technologies is undergoing final preparations to launch Australia’s first commercial orbital rocket.
Coverage maps show Abbot Point within the 4G plan, but the company’s communications set-up doesn’t rely on mobile towers.
Abbot Point’s rocket launch system is independent of the mobile system. (Supplied: Zaid Dillon, Gilmour Space Technologies)
Chief executive Adam Gilmour said they had instead tapped into a worldwide network of base stations.
“It’s like a big satellite dish at our launch site, and it has enough power, once [the rocket] hits orbit, to communicate with it,” Mr Gilmour said.
And soon, they won’t even have to rely on ground-based communications at all.
“Then we don’t have worry about altitude and things like that,” Mr Gilmour said.
“We’ll eventually put up satellites of our own. For now, we’ll just use another commercial provider.”
Escaping the communications blackhole
Federal MP for Capricornia Michelle Landry said she had received complaints from residents about prolonged periods without mobile phone coverage.
She said it was leaving Collinsville locals isolated.
Across the Whitsunday local government area, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman received more than a dozen complaints between April and June about mobile services, mostly relating to “no or delayed action” by a telco.
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The Liberal National Party member is calling for Telstra’s “universal service obligation”, which currently only applies to landline services, to be extended.
“Most people have a mobile device. Even with the landlines now, if the power goes out and we’ve got a weather event, that drops out anyway,” Ms Landry said.
In a statement to the ABC, Telstra acknowledged the “congestion” problem in Collinsville and committed to building a second tower in the middle of town.
Regional general manager Rachel Cliffe said the project would provide 5G to the area for the first time and improve capacity.
Ms Cliffe said community consultation would begin in December, but no completion date had been set.
From dial-up to fibre
In the meantime, a free proto-internet cafe in the centre of town continues to keep the community connected as it has done for the last 23 years.
Sue Clarke says residents can use internet at the Telecentre. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
Sue Clark has been the heart of the publicly funded, not-for-profit operated Collinsville Connect Telecentre since it opened in 2001.
“We tend to focus on people that don’t have those options at home,” she said.
“Everyone’s got a super computer in their pocket, but there are still a lot of people, there that are either on really low plans or don’t have data packs.”
The Telecentre, conceived as part of the Howard-era “Networking the Nation” program, was a part of a wider push to provide regional, rural and remote people with internet.
While many sites have since closed, at Collinsville it’s a place where staff offer wide ranging support to keep residents connected — even phone and laptop repairs.
“Even in some of the bigger towns, I haven’t really found some sort of place where you can go in, just get help filling out a form or just sending an email,” Jamaine Miller, a staffer of six years said.
The Telecentre is believed to be the last of its kind. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)
Mr McDonald said the centre had been indispensable, allowing him to access basic digital services like his email.
“The technology is wonderful, but unless you know how to drive it, it’s a nightmare,” he said.
