Telstra users in Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Esperance will experience multi-hour outages in early February

Telstra users near Mt Charlotte will be without mobile service for 50 hours and users in North Esperance will be in the dark for 24 hours, as the provider upgrades its mobile base stations servicing the areas. Near Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s Mt Charlotte, a four-hour outage will occur on February 2 and twice on February 7, with a 10-hour outage planned for February 3, 4, and 6, and an eight-hour outage on February 5. In North Esperance, a four-hour outage will occur on February 9 and 12, and an eight-hour outage on February 10 and 11. Some of these outages will affect all mobile services, while some of them may only cause intermittent blackouts and reductions in performance while site work is conducted. Telstra regional general manager Boyd Brown said the work would add capacity to the 4G mobile sites and mean faster downloads, smoother streaming, and less congestion for users. “The work will also make the site ready for a further upgrade to our even faster 5G in the future,” he said. “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.” Telstra customers are encouraged to switch on wi-fi calling in their phone settings, which will enable them to make calls and send texts during the outages. Any calls made to triple-0 when the site is off-air will automatically connect to another mobile network, if available. The work will occur two weeks after Telstra upgraded the mobile base station that services the Kalgoorlie-Boulder suburb of Lamington West.