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Resilient telecommunication networks are vital for keeping communities safe, connected and informed during disasters and emergencies. Despite the best efforts of telecommunications carriers, networks can experience an outage from infrastructure or equipment being damaged or destroyed, or because other supporting services are unavailable, such as power.
In natural disasters, restoring telecommunications may not be a quick fix, even where there is no damage to infrastructure. Restoration times will vary and an outage can last for hours, or multiple days.
It is in the commercial and public interests of telecommunications carriers to get services back up and running as soon as possible, and they have a number of options available. Telecommunications carriers work with energy providers to restore power and can also deploy personnel to impacted sites to install temporary infrastructure when it is safe to do so, and in cooperation with emergency service organisations.
We have co-invested with the telecommunications industry to purchase portable communications facilities such as cells on wheels (COWs), mobile exchanges on wheels (MEOWs) and NBN Road Muster trucks, which can be pre-positioned in areas at risk of disaster or, following a disaster or emergency in affected areas to allow communications services to be restored quickly.
The investment means temporary communications infrastructure is ready to hit the road when needed, allowing Australians to keep in contact with family and essential services, and making sure essential food, water and fuel purchases can occur.