Vital network upgrade may cause temporary mobile outages in Albany suburb Mt Melville for a week

Telstra customers may have disruptions in service over the next week as they company upgrades it mobile base station to improve the 4G and 5G user experience in Mt Melville.

The upgrades are set to improve the mobile sites capacity, meaning faster downloads, smoother streaming and less congestion.

Telstra regional general manager Boyd Brown said the update is necessary to provide users with better connectivity.

“As data use over our mobile network continues to grow, adding extra 4G capacity to our mobile site in the area will help deliver faster downloads, smoother streaming and less congestion for customers,” he said.

“The work will also make the site ready for a further upgrade to our even faster 5G in the future.

“We know how important mobile connectivity is for Australians, whether you’re in the city or the country.”

Mobile services in Mt Melville will be affected from February 3-8 experiencing daily outages of up to eight hours between 7am and 5pm while work is carried out on the site.

A full outage affecting all mobile services from the site is scheduled for February 9 between 7am and 5pm, followed by a further six-hour outage on February 10 during that time.

Mr Brown said they will try to minimise disruptions as much as possible.

“While disruption is required while the upgrade is under way, we’ll only be switching off the site when we need to and will have it back online and working better than ever as quickly as possible,” he said.

Landline services, NBN, satellite internet services and mobile coverage from other providers won’t be impacted by the infrastructure upgrades.

Business owners are encouraged to talk to their bank about connecting their EFTPOS terminals to their NBN or wi-fi connection to prevent delays in processing transactions over the next week.

Telstra has confirmed that customers can continue to make calls and send texts during the disruption by switching on wi-fi calling which is a free setting on most mobile phones.