Chaos in Burra as Telstra upgrades to mobile phone tower cripple EFTPOS with little warning, businesses say

Burra businesses have lost EFTPOS, accusing Telstra of cutting off the town’s connection with little warning.

Burra businesses are angry Telstra mobile phone outages have blocked the town’s EFTPOS systems, they say without adequate warning.

The telecommunications giant has confirmed an automatic text-based system did warn of the upgrading work, which is required to provide 5G services to the community.

Many residents took to Facebook today to complain about the problem, with some driving to the town’s sole mobile phone tower to inquire directly from contract workers.

Burra Motor Inn operator Robert Frischke said major disruption had begun on Wednesday when Telstra contractors began work to upgrade the town’s mobile tower to operate the new 5G systems.

He said there had been no warning received by many and one local resident had been on the Telstra online complaint system for 31 hours without being given any answers.

“Everyone in town is trying to find out what the hell is going on, we can’t use EFTPOS to take payments from customers, and during COVID-19 when people aren’t using cash,’’ Mr Frischke said.

A 5G Telstra tower.

“I can take credit card details from customers and they can pay later, but there are many cafes and small businesses in town and it is causing chaos.

“There must be warnings about this so we can organise ourselves and customers.”

A Telstra investigation has revealed text warnings were sent to residents, twice, late last month.

“We know there’s never a perfect time to schedule upgrade work. We apologise for the interruption but once we’re finished it’ll mean better services for our customers,’’ a spokesman said.

The Regional Council of Goyder is also affected, with a warning to residents that they may not be able to contact workers and services.

A Telstra spokesman said it had a text-message system that told each mobile device in the area of a Telstra tower when it was due to be down for upgrades.

Businesses should talk to their bank about EFTPOS systems, which work via landline connection in around two-thirds of cases, he said.

Burra has only one tower near the town, so others cannot be used to back up the system during upgrading, he said.

He said Telstra mobile phone users could also switch to making mobile calls via the NBN through a Wi-Fi facility on many mobile phones during outages; what-is-telstra-Wi-Fi-calling

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