Carcoar has often been described as the town that time forgot, but even a century ago the historic village south of Blayney had a working telephone landline.
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After a storm severed the landline on December 19 and caused substantial damage to the surrounding area, the village's landlines have been silent.
Add to that the poor mobile coverage that has been delayed due to the concerns from a resident that the new tower would have an adverse visual impact, and the town's residents and businesses have been suffering.
Resident Andrew Baulch said that he's had Telstra make a number of assurances that the land line would be fixed, and it was only late last week that the familiar dial tone returned to the village's phones.
"They first said it would be repaired on the 31st of December, then the 8th, 13th, 18th and 21st of January," he said.
"I've even had to get a request from the telecommunications ombudsman to put pressure on Telstra to take action."
With businesses in the town hotspotting and sharing wireless NBN with other stores so that they could complete eftpos transactions, Mr Baulch believes that Telstra's slow action has inconvenienced the village in a major way.
"There are some people who were being asked to work from home because of COVID who have had to go into Bathurst or Orange to work. It's unacceptable in this day and age to be out of contact for so long."
Fellow Carcoar resident Brian Parker questioned whether such a delay in re-establishing the connection would have been acceptable in a larger centre.
"Imagine if there was a one month delay in getting those lines reconnected in places like Orange and Bathurst, let alone in Sydney," he said.
"We're still on ADSL so for the entire school holidays we were without streaming services and at one point we had to go for a drive to get a better mobile connection to download some movies."
Mr Parker said that although the wheels of Telstra turned slowly, the support he received from the Telstra support people was exemplary.
" I couldn't speak more highly of them," he said.
"They are at the mercy of Telstra's organisation and were able to send us a new, more modern modem that they helped set up.
"They were excellent, but the process of getting it repaired and communicating with us about where the process was up to, well for a communications company it was appalling."
A Telstra spokesperson said that the fault was with a piece of hardware.
"A hardware issue that was disrupting landline internet services for a small number of customers in Carcoar was fixed on 21 January," he said.
"We know the disruption would have made the holiday period difficult for some and we thank everyone for their patience.
"If anyone if still having issues, we encourage them to get in contact with us so we can investigate."
Good news though in the switching on of the new 4G tower.
"A 4G small cell was activated in Carcoar last week, delivering improved mobile coverage to the community as part of the Federal Government's Mobile Black Spot Program," the spokesperson said.
"This is one of more than 200 small cells we have rolled out, in addition to the nearly 1,300 mobile base stations we are building under the program."
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