Businesses in some of Queensland's most popular outback tourism destinations say they are trading "in the dark age" for days on end during unexpected, but increasingly common, Telstra outages.
Birdsville and Bedourie have a combined population of less than 1,000 but the towns attract tens of thousands of visitors each year for coveted outback events and experiences.
However, there have been three major telecommunications outages lasting two to three days at a time since March.
The outages result in internet and mobile phone services disappearing and, in Bedourie, even landlines stop working.
Royal Flying Doctor Service Charleville base manager Liane Spencer said there was potential for life-threatening situations to arise because of the outages.
"If people have had an accident in the field or on a road and are unable to use their mobile phones to contact us, then there is the real potential for lives to be lost," Ms Spencer said.
Critical connection cuts out
Bedourie residents said they were unable to call Triple-0 during a three-day outage last week.
Services went down twice for two days in March and once for eight hours in Birdsville and Bedourie.
Telstra said those outages were due to parts not being on site.
Emergency services in Bedourie, including the police station and health service, have access to satellite phones and satellite internet during outages but many tourists and residents do not.
Bedourie resident Paula Brown said she was concerned about not being contactable by her two sons working on cattle stations.
"It worries me that they might get injured and there's no way to communicate to me that they're injured," she said.
She said people in COVID isolation would become completely isolated when they couldn't communicate with anyone outside.
'Peak frustration': businesses eye off Starlink
The Birdsville Hotel is so fed up with the outages it has turned to Starlink, a satellite internet service founded by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, to see if it can help.
The hotel's co-owner said her frustration level had peaked.
"We've just lost all our respect for Telstra," she said.
"We just don't think that they really care about what's actually happening in communities like this that rely on these sorts of things.
"We're going to engage with Starlink and see if we can get a better system happening."
The hotel is a rare point in the town that has one working copper landline and is often a triage point for families who cannot contact loved ones.
"So [we've] really just been left in the dark ages," operations manager Darren Collins said.
Telstra: get a back-up
Telstra recommends residents affected by the outages purchase satellite internet and satellite phones as a backup.
Telstra's regional executive for Australia, Loretta Willaton, said a satellite-type service or even a satellite phone was a "good insurance policy" for people to consider.
Telstra's cheapest satellite phone and plan costs about $120 per month, which doesn't include the $1.20 per minute cost of a call.
Ms Brown said the extra cost on top of her regular phone and internet bills would "virtually make it impossible" to afford.
Diamantine Shire mayor Robbie Dare said residents should not have to purchase satellite links because the council had contributed millions to a 550km optic cable network that was completed in 2017.
But regional telecommunications advocate and Alpha grazier Kristy Sparrow compared having a telecommunications backup to having a generator during power outages.
Ms Sparrow said satellite internet — including NBN satellite — had vastly improved in the past few years and was more affordable than a satellite phone.
"As consumers, we need to be a bit better prepared for when there is going to be an outage because there always will be."
