Chief executive says if infrastructure is damaged by floods ‘there’s nothing that we can do about that in the short term’
Telstra has defended its response to recent floods in northern New South Wales, saying large-scale and lengthy outages were inevitable once rivers cut off electricity or flooded base stations.
Telstra’s chief executive, Andy Penn, said it was understandable for communities to be frustrated about disruption to telecommunications but the damage to infrastructure was significant, and it would take time to rebuild.
“MPs will often lash out sort of loosely,” Penn said, adding that Telstra staff had worked closely with emergency services to restore services, even using fishing rods and lines to cast fibre links over rivers to replace cables that had been washed away.
“If a tower has been taken out because of a bushfire or because of a flood, there’s nothing that we can do about that in the short term,” he said.
Since telecommunications infrastructure is typically near the communities that use it, if the community is affected, so will be the equipment.
Catherine Cusack, the NSW upper house MP who said she would resign because the Morrison government had delayed extending flood assistance to areas not in a National MP’s electorate, said Telstra should have done a much better job of keeping the public informed about efforts to restore services.
“The communications about communications was a shambles,” Cusack said. “They didn’t come across as caring at all – that just made people more anxious.”
Cusack said she emailed Telstra to tell them the poor information being disseminated “has triggered immense anger and eroded our confidence you are working as fast as you can on these problems”.
The daily briefings for local MPs by emergency services were often heated in the aftermath of the floods, with communications among the leading issues.
One concern was about why the backup battery for one of Telstra’s main bases in the region was located in a basement that was quickly flooded, Cusack said. “We must have had second-class infrastructure for it to give in so easily.”
Penn said that in the majority of cases, the main problem was the lack of electricity. While Telstra can provide batteries, the backup is limited and still may be inundated, and it can take time to get staff in to repair equipment if roads are dangerous or blocked because of flooding.
Ongoing efforts to restore services may get a fresh set back if expected rains return to flood-hit regions in coming days.
The NSW State Emergency Service on Wednesday warned of the potential for flash flooding and riverine flooding in the northern rivers and mid-north coast districts.
“The BoM has advised these areas will be impacted by storm activity over coming days with localised heavy falls up to 150mm in some areas with embedded ‘supercells’,” the SES said in the alert.
The BoM had issued a flood watch for minor flooding on the Bellinger and Nambucca rivers.
Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning
Telstra has been stepping up its own efforts to remain carbon neutral and become fully reliant on renewable energy by 2025.
On Wednesday the company announced a technology trial to plant and manage the reforestation of 240 hectares of land to store greenhouse gas emissions and improve environmental resilience of its property.
Telstra will plant about 158,000 native trees and shrubs, which are expected to store about 160,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next 25 years, Penn said, adding the gains would amount to about 1% of the carbon it emits.
The company will use aerial drones to plant the seeds and use its own Internet of Things capability to monitor environmental conditions and weather predictions.
“This trial is really about seeing the role that we can play in creating more carbon credits by taking more carbon out of the environment,” Penn said.
He said Telstra will extend the work on other sites using the experience it gains from the trial.
