Ampilatwatja Health claims it was given no warning Telstra was about to take 4G offline

Telstra has defended itself from claims it placed another health service in a difficult position by pulling the 4G rug out from underneath it, after an Aboriginal health corporation in the Barkly said lives had been placed at risk.

Ampilatwatja, Northern Territory. Picture: Facebook

Latest, November 8: Telstra has defended itself from claims it placed another health service in a difficult position by pulling the 4G rug out from underneath it, after an Aboriginal health corporation in the remote Barkly said lives had been placed at risk.

Earlier this week, this masthead exclusively revealed Darwin’s Tiwi campus, which contains Royal Darwin and Darwin Private hospitals, had lost Telstra 4G connectivity, with the telco subsequently admitting it failed to follow proper processes when it switched off the base station for upgrades.

Now, Ampilatwatja Health Centre Aboriginal Corporation, located at Ampilatwatja community, northeast of Alice Springs, says its Telstra 4G base station has also been taken offline at short notice.

In a statement, the corporation said it only found out about the outage, which lasted from November 2–8, when connectivity was lost.

“To cut off entire communities for up to a week is completely unacceptable; it puts lives at risk,” chief executive Darryl Coulstock said.

“As it stands, nobody in the community can ring the health service and our outstations have no way of contacting us.

“They are completely cut off – if there’s an emergency out there, we won’t know.

“This is not a minor inconvenience.

“In this community, we are the health service, and we are also the ambulance service.

“We rely on mobile connection to run our health services, communicate with our outstations and look after our communities – people whose lives are now at risk simply because there was no contingency plan to ensure some form of mobile connectivity remained while Telstra carried out this upgrade.

“It is an accident waiting to happen. Where is the duty of care to make sure there’s an availability of service?”

For its part, Telstra NT regional manager Nic Danks said the telco texted locals, and advised local stakeholders including government and emergency services, of the upcoming service interruptions on October 29 (four days before service was ultimately lost).

“The site upgrade in Ampilatwatja has been requested by the community and local government for over five years, to provide better connectivity for local residents,” Mr Danks said.

“There is only one base station in the community which needs to be turned off to perform the works to upgrade the tower.

“The works were scheduled for now as they must be complete before the upcoming wet season.”

The timing of Ampilatwatja’s base station upgrade has been a moving feast for years – in July 2022, it was reported the works were a year away.

The Ampilatwatja upgrade was funded under the Regional Connectivity Program, a tripartite funding agreement between the commonwealth, Telstra and the states and territories.

‘Processes not followed’ in Darwin hospitals’ 4G black spot: Telstra

November 6, 3pm: Telstra has admitted it failed to follow proper processes when it switched off its Tiwi base station for upgrades, leaving Darwin’s two hospitals in a black spot and outraging medical figures, who say it has placed patients at risk.

On Tuesday, this masthead exclusively revealed Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) and Darwin Private Hospital had lost Telstra 4G connectivity over the weekend.

An employee at the private hospital said patient care at both facilities had been affected, citing the example of him being unable to access the Acacia patient health records system because of its two-factor authentication.

A Telstra 4G outage due to the telco’s upgrade of the Tiwi base station (seen atop the main building) is making the delivery of healthcare more difficult, health insiders say. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

NT Health has denied patients have been placed at risk.

In a statement, Telstra admitted the upgrade of its base station at Tiwi has not been done in accordance with its internal processes.

“We are upgrading our tower in Tiwi by raising it 20m, which will significantly increase mobile coverage to provide better connectivity for the hospital and local area,” Telstra Northern Territory general manager Nic Danks said.

Telstra’s Nic Danks. Picture: File

“Whenever we perform work on our mobile sites that could impact our customers and stakeholders, we follow strict processes to make sure we notify them.

“Some of those processes were not followed this time and for that we’re very sorry.”

Exactly when the signal was lost, when NT Health was notified, and when it will return is difficult to discern.

Last Friday, the RDH executive messaged staff to say it would be fixed by Wednesday; Telstra’s website says 7pm Saturday; and Mr Danks said the telco was hopeful it would be fixed by this Friday.

The 4G outage due to the upgrade of Telstra's Tiwi base station. Picture: Telstra

Neither Telstra nor NT Health will say when the telco told the government agency its main hospital was about to lose connectivity.

Australian Medical Association Northern Territory branch president Dr Robert Parker said he was “appalled” by the situation, which has affected teams’ ability to communicate with one another.

“It is an outrage – potentially if someone dies, this could be a part of a coronial inquest,” he said.

NT AMA President Dr Robert Parker. Picture: File

“The potential impact on patient health is a major concern.”

After calling Telstra on Monday for a please explain, Dr Parker said he was left with the impression there had been a “lack of planning” on the telco’s part to ensure the impacts on healthcare would be minimised.

Ongoing 4G outage causing problems at Darwin hospitals, insiders say

November 5, 5am: The ongoing loss of Telstra 4G connectivity at Darwin’s Tiwi hospitals is affecting patient care, a health insider says, questioning why the telco didn’t schedule the planned maintenance before the 3G network was shut off.

Telstra’s outage map currently lists the site containing Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) and Darwin Private Hospital as having 4G mobile outages due to “planned maintenance”.

Full services were estimated to resume by 7pm Saturday.

However, the planned maintenance is already taking longer than expected, with the RDH executive advising staff as recently as last Friday they had been told the planned maintenance, which began on October 16, would be complete by Wednesday this week.

“We are currently experiencing intermittent 4G mobile outages in the outer buildings on campus,” the email to staff read.

“During this maintenance period, intermittent outages are likely on the mobile network, which will impact all consumers using Telstra.”
The email listed the Alan Walker Cancer Care Centre and the mental health precinct as areas particularly affected.

In a statement, an NT Health spokesman said there had been “no impact to operations or service delivery at Royal Darwin Hospital as a result of planned maintenance to the 4G network”.

“There has however, been some disruption to the mobile phone service across the hospital campus,” he added.

“The [RDH] has business continuity plans to ensure operations can continue in the case of an outage.”

An RDH source not authorised to speak publicly told this masthead he couldn’t think of any critical care systems at the hospital that might be impacted by the Telstra outages, but admitted it was a “little out of my expertise area”.

“The main issues will likely be phone calls/texts between teams,” the source said.

However, a Darwin Private Hospital staff member said the outages, which first affected him last Friday, had been causing grief at the Healthscope-owned facility.

“It has been affecting operations across both hospitals, not only in patient care but even things like EFTPOS machines,” he said.

“We all communicate by our phones so that is an issue.

“I need to access the public Acacia [health records information] system, but that relies on me receiving an SMS code, which I cannot now.

“It’s crazy that it’s potentially going for another week and they waited until 3G went down before doing this.”

In a statement, Telstra said the outage was due to an upgrade of its Tiwi base station, with the planned outage from November 3–9, representing the worst of the interruptions over the past few weeks, “unavoidable”.

“NBN and landline services are not impacted, and any calls to triple-0 from a Telstra mobile automatically divert to other providers if Telstra’s mobile network isn’t available and overlapping coverage exists,” she said.

“We recommend customers activate Wi-Fi calling, which allows their phone to use their Wi-Fi connection to make and receive calls.

“This is a free setting on most popular phones.

“Once the works have been completed, it will result in better coverage for the community.”

Originally published as Ampilatwatja Health claims it was given no warning Telstra was about to take 4G offline