Adelaide River residents were left without phone signal – or an explanation – for nearly a week

For more than six days Adelaide River residents were left wondering what happened to their mobile phone signal, after an unexpected hardware failure disrupted the town’s only cell tower.

Mobile signal has been restored to Adelaide River. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

For more than six days Adelaide River residents were left wondering what happened to their mobile phone signal, after an unexpected hardware failure disrupted the town’s only cell tower.

A mobile outage at the rural town of Adelaide River was restored Thursday afternoon, after a lightning strike which severely damaged Telstra’s mobile tower and equipment on January 3.

Residents claim they were left without explanation from Telstra and Optus.

Adelaide River Fire Station. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

“No service, no explanation and no restoration time,” one resident told this masthead.

“People were buying Optus SIM cards to get service now there is no Optus service either.”

“We have ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) internet available to us, but no NBN even though we are only 120kms from Darwin. Our local school has NBN but not the town.”

In a statement, a Telstra spokeswoman said they worked quickly to fix the issue but encountered challenges.

“Our technicians quickly attended the site, but it was a complex fix due to damaged hardware which needed to be replaced, multiple equipment failures and power issues on the site”, the spokeswoman said.

“While we do our absolute best to keep the network running as smoothly as possible, unfortunately when working with technology things can go wrong, and having a second type of connection like satellite internet, NBN or a landline is the best way for customers to make sure they can stay connected even when a mobile outage occurs.”

This measthead has contacted Optus who are yet to provide comment.