Mobile phones, 3G and the coming sounds of silence in the bush

Imagine you’re on a far-flung farm and you have been gored by a bull or pinned under your tractor.

You reach for your trusty old mobile phone, hit the emergency 000 code … and you’re greeted by silence.

That’s the prospect potentially facing tens or even hundreds of thousands of country Australians – no one seems to quite knows the actual number – if things don’t improve remarkably by the time the phone networks switch off the last of their 3G services in October.

What will happen to emergency call access in country areas when the 3G network is switched off?Credit: Josh Robenstone

In a nation of 27 million, a hundred thousand may not sound much of a number. Out in country Australia, however, where a local town’s population might be less than a thousand, or a remote district can muster no more than a handful, it’s plenty significant enough.

Australia’s telecommunications networks argue that they need to switch off 3G to “repurpose” its spectrum to make 4G and their shiny new 5G networks work better. Few, it was assumed, would have a problem with that, least of all Australia’s city dwellers, who have been using 4G or 5G for quite some time now.

But in the great Australian distances, clunky old 3G has long been a lifesaver. Literally.

Even if your mobile phone has rotten reception, the 3G system still connects to emergency services. You’ve probably experienced this system, while driving beyond city limits, when your phone suddenly loses reception and declares itself capable of “SOS only”.

Many country people, knowing 3G was for the chop, upgraded their phones long ago to 4G, even in areas where 4G doesn’t actually work.

Those phones currently connect to emergency services through 3G if 4G reception isn’t available, or they’re supposed to do so. It means they are crucial when a farm accident or a car smash on an isolated road occurs.

But when 3G is gone, it turns out many of those 4G phones, particularly older models or those purchased overseas, won’t be able to make emergency calls or send text messages at all.

Others, crazily, will be capable of making regular phone calls, but not emergency calls.

And if you are unlucky enough to live in one of the country areas that rely entirely on 3G and lack connectivity to 4G, your phone and other telecommunications devices will be rendered useless.

Telstra and Optus don’t want to give anyone the impression they’re abandoning vulnerable country people, of course. Or, heaven forbid, city dwellers on country holidays.

Why, after planning the 3G shutdown for five years, they and an alarmed federal government have launched all sorts of last-minute programs to try to inform mobile phone users in the bush about what is about to befall them, and to urge them to take all necessary steps to limit negative effects upon their lives.

Implicitly recognising previous such programs have been less than successful, Telstra and Optus have suddenly delayed the date on which they’ll switch off their 3G services.

Telstra had planned to kill 3G late this month and Optus was proposing to do the same in September.

But senators and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) only weeks ago declared themselves unimpressed to discover there were still hundreds of thousands of users who could find their phones and other devices silenced.

The latest plan by Telstra and Optus is to hammer the final nail in 3G’s coffin on October 28. Vodafone quit the service in January this year.

Meanwhile, the essential advice? Users should upgrade their phones.

Oh, and if they have already upgraded, they should check whether their 4G phone will be capable of actually contacting emergency services once 3G is gone.

Once 3G is gone, nothing will make some mobile phones connect to emergency services.Credit: iStock

Which, often enough, they won’t.

Hence the alarm.

That also goes for half a million devices such as personal medical alarms, older smart watches, eftpos machines, security systems, electricity and water meters, tablets and such-like that up to now have worked only on the 3G system.

ACCAN’s new CEO Carol Bennett put it succinctly last month when calling for Telstra and Optus to delay the shutdown.

“We need reassurance that those who are reliant on 3G medical devices, low-income and vulnerable consumers, as well as farms and businesses, are not exposed to harm or left behind,” said Bennett.

Well, quite.

But the advice for those who can’t readily afford a newer device, or those older or isolated people flummoxed about how to do so, or those who live in areas where the end of 3G also means the end of mobile phone reception altogether?

Awfully sorry. Beyond the latest information blitz, Telstra reportedly giving away 12,000 new phones, and Optus handing out 20,000 of them, it’s wait and see, though you’d hope you weren’t left waiting while pinned to a fence by your tractor.

Telstra, meanwhile, maintains it is “committed” to providing 4G coverage in all 3G areas before the shutdown occurs. Given the process up to now – Telstra was saying the same thing long before the latest delay was announced – this sounds optimistic.

Rural dwellers could be forgiven for finding the whole thing a bit too familiar.

They remember the NBN’s promises, the ABC switching off its shortwave service. and banks which left plenty of them high and dry when they quit country towns, high-tailing it in a fog of excuses that added up to nothing more than that the local population wasn’t large enough to matter.

You can check whether you need a new phone by texting “3” to 3498.