Pomonal Estate owner Pepita Atchison said she would launch a campaign to encourage businesses to complain to service providers and log their reports with Mr Tehan’s office.
“Keep complaining, keep ringing service providers and get a customer reference number,” she said.
“Email Dan Tehan’s office, so the complaints are properly logged. Their records show no one has complained since 2015.”
Mrs Atchison said her business had lost significant sales during the past two weekends because of a lack of connectivity.
“We had more than 400 people at the weekend, and 700 the weekend before. We’ve lost a lot of sales – we couldn’t even do direct transfers. A lot of people just had to leave, because there was no way of paying,” she said.
“We’ve had people verbally abusing us because we had no EFTPOS. It was so embarrassing. It makes us look like we’re not professional.”
She said connection issues were becoming more frequent and there was a need for systems to be equipped for heavier demand.
“This has been on and off for the past six months,” she said.
“Tourism in the Grampians is huge in March – we need to do something to help with the influx of people who come in for events.”
Telstra provides coverage in the area from towers at Moyston, Ararat and Stawell, and Optus and NBN have dedicated coverage in Pomonal.
Telstra regional general manager Steve Tinker said Telstra was looking at ways to improve services.
“We are always looking at ways we can manage periods of peak demand on the network,” he said.
He said Tesltra was trying to better prepare the network for festivals such as Moyston’s Pitch Music and Arts Festival, which attracted 10,000 people.
“On the March long weekend there was unprecedented demand on the mobile network from a festival near Moyston and unfortunately that impacted regular mobile coverage into Moyston and Pomonal,” he said.
“We are always looking at future network requirements and how we can manage periods of high demand – and sometimes we look to partner with festivals or events to install temporary mobile sites.”
Mr Tinker said finding the right provider could also help businesses improve their connection.
“EFTPOS machines can connect to multiple networks – there’s NBN available around Pomonal and businesses can contact their bank to understand how to do that,” he said.
Dr Harrison said it was time to improve the network to cater for the increasing demand of tourism in the region.
“Pomonal is a very important area of tourism activity for us,” he said.
“We’ve got businesses starting to grow and flourish and we see this as a growth area for us.
“If you have 400 people trying to make transactions you can’t process digitally, that makes a huge impact – you have no way of actually regaining that lost revenue.
“It’s really hard to grow if you don’t have the technology. We’ll be advocating to the best of our ability to get a positive outcome.”
Dr Harrison said the council would work with businesses to create a solution.
“Our advocacy role here is really important to support the community. We need to do business properly,” he said.
“We need to present the problem to the service provider, that’s how we will fix this issue.”
Ms Kealy has also started a petition for people to sign, which will go to more than 50 businesses.
The entire March 18, 2020 edition of The Weekly Advertiser is available online. READ IT HERE!
