Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I represent the electorate of Forrest in the south-west of Western Australia. Like many of my constituents, I have experienced firsthand the inadequate coverage and service from Telstra’s Next G service. I am not convinced that Telstra understands its customers and their wants and needs to use their mobile phones in what is a mobile environment throughout my electorate. That is really why they bought a mobile phone: to be able to use it anywhere that they need to.

Ultimately, this means that they move around. Whether it is across country areas or in an urban area, in any form of work, they need to be able to use their mobile phone. They have grown up with the technology and it is used in their businesses as well as in their private lives. They rely on mobile phones in many instances—as do the emergency services. The inconvenience, expense, loss of income and down time to businesses caused by trialling several Next G handsets that have ultimately proven to be unsuitable to their needs has been a very costly exercise in many instances and extremely frustrating as well. I believe that constituents should be able to have confidence in a mobile service and a company that is reliable and has adequate coverage.

Constituents who have contacted my office or whom I have spoken to have basically had major problems with the Next G service in comparison to what they were using with CDMA. They were given many assurances about the Next G in comparison to CDMA but have had real difficulty in that process. They have even felt quite harassed by many Telstra sales calls demanding that they make the switch from CDMA to Next G. Many more made the switch fearing that they may not be allowed to retain the same mobile service numbers, which are important to a lot of people. They questioned the need for the haste for Telstra to switch off the network on 28 January. In my office we received so many calls about that potential switch-off time. Really the Next G service at that time was severely wanting in access and in coverage.

After making the switch to Next G, citizens were often very severely inconvenienced and quite frustrated, and could not even access the service that they needed to use. And it was certainly in no way comparable to what they were receiving with CDMA. They were inconvenienced because they had to make numerous visits back to the Telstra dealers and to the agents to demand either their money back or a least a better quality handset to try to make their phones work.