Telstra slammed over no internet, phone for 11 days at South Kolan, Bundaberg

Businesses, the local school and a country pub west of Bundaberg have been left without phone or internet for the past 11 days, and there is no end in sight.

South Kolan pub owner Alec Duffy and his wife Jo.

Up to 40 South Kolan businesses are struggling after 11 days without internet or phone service.

Publican Alec Duffy has run the South Kolan Hotel Motel for almost 12 years and has never experienced the challenges he is currently facing - not even at the height of the region’s worst floods.

On Thursday, January 19, the South Kolan Hotel Motel lost internet, phone and eftpos connection. Another 20-40 homes and businesses in the area also lost that connection, including the primary school.

Mr Duffy said Telstra initially refused to look into the outage, claiming the fault could not be within its network and that it had to be a local issue. It was only after he reached out to the office of Flynn state MP Colin Boyce that Telstra agreed to come investigate the problem, five days later, he said.

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Mr Duffy said the technician was able to fix the eftpos but when trying to fix the phone connection, could not get the support from Telstra, after he was left on hold for more than 20 minutes to no avail.

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“They can’t even get their employees the support they need, how can they expect us to?” he said.

Telstra finally told Mr Duffy the outage would be fixed on January 30. But that did not happen.

Publican Alec Duffy has run the South Kolan Hotel Motel for almost 12 years and has never experienced the challenges he is currently facing - not even at the height of the region’s worst floods.

Mr Duffy’s livelihood depends on customers at the motel and pub. The outage - still not resolved as of January 31 - has cost he and his wife financially and emotionally.

“We are trying to run a business,” he said.

“I can’t even pay my employees. I had to pay them in cash.”

The outage could not have happened at a worse time for the business. The school holidays are the busy season and by missing out on the ability to advertise, operate keno or even access the phone line for take away orders and reservations, the Duffys have been “losing money hand over fist”.

Australia Day is one of the busiest days of the year in South Kolan, and the pub is at the centre of the celebrations.

“Everything happens at the pub,” said Mr Duffy, who is a third generation South Kolan resident.

In the Australia Day spirit, the Duffy family persevered through the outage and the day went swimmingly with more than 200 customers.

South Kolan Hotel Motel publicans Alec Duffy.

Mr Duffy teamed up with local police officers Connor McCaul and Matt Swan to raise funds for the local fire brigade.

The fundraiser involved spaghetti filled balloon being thrown at the three men while they were handcuffed to each other. Despite the outage, the celebrations were a success, raising $1140.70.

Telstra was approached for a response on Monday, January 30, and said the outage was caused by a hardware issue affecting the ADSL connection and they expected to have it fixed and the internet back by Tuesday night, January 31 (if all goes well).