Work From Home Order Reveals Digital Disconnect

Regional Cities New South Wales (RCNSW) has called on regional residents to make their voice heard about the telecommunications issues they face while working from home.

Under recently amended public health orders, employers in regional NSW must now allow people to work from home where reasonably practicable, placing unprecedented demand on the network.

Chair of RCNSW Cr Tim Overall said “The current work from home order is shedding new light on old problems. Telecommunications infrastructure in regional NSW needs to keep pace with demand so our regions are equipped to deal with the new way of doing business in a COVID-world, that looks to be with us for some time yet.”

An independent committee is currently conducting a review of the adequacy of regional telecommunication services for the Government. Individuals, businesses and organisations are urged to make a submission to the 2021 Regional Telecommunications Review by September 30 2021 by emailing their views to secretariat@rtirc.gov.au or attending one of the online forums listed on their website www.rtirc.gov.au.

“We know our regional telecommunication networks were a critical problem during last year’s bushfires, and the recent mouse plague has created further outages” said Cr Overall.

“There are basic issues of adequacy, accessibility and reliability that need to be addressed and it’s really important that the people of regional NSW make a submission so that we can get the right telecommunications infrastructure in place” Cr Overall said.