Residents of a country town in southern Western Australia are demanding answers from Telstra after an outage left internet and mobile services cut for more than a week.

The 4G mobile outage left locals in Wickepin, 210 kilometres south-east of Perth, and surrounding communities electronically cut off for eight days. 

Telstra confirmed the outage on September 25 and expects the issue will be resolved later today. 

Megan Henry, who lives on a farm near neighbouring Kulin, said the event has had a significant impact.

“We are in day eight of a blackout,” she said.

“It’s affecting every part of our lives, from being out of contact from loved ones to running a business.

The issue, she said, had also impacted her ability to work from the farm.

“No phone calls, no internet, no nothing. We can’t do any payroll. We can’t access any emails,” she said.

“Our compliance for us being a school bus contractor is huge and I’ve had to relocate for that.”

Simon Duckworth lives on a farm in Harrismith, south-east of Wickepin.

“We’ve generally got pretty good reception, but it’s caused a fair bit of havoc over the last seven or eight days,” he said.

His wife runs a business from the farm and Mr Duckworth said it had disrupted her work.

“She forwent three days’ work last week and she had to go up to Kulin to work yesterday,” he said. 

“She’s driven up there again today just to get some semblance of reception.”

Hardware issues

It comes three months after a similar outage left residents in Dongara without mobile coverage for a week.

A Telstra spokesperson said hardware issues has been identified at the Wickepin East and Traysurin sites which had been impacting mobile services.

“We’ve ordered a new part to replace the faulty hardware and we are estimating that it will be resolved later today,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday.

“We thank customers for their patience while we’re working as quickly as possible to restore services.”

WA’s deputy opposition leader and Wickepin resident Steve Martin said it was the longest outage he could remember.

“I don’t recall anything remotely close to this,” he said.

“We use WhatsApp groups to let each other know what’s going on — if there is smoke, or if there’s a fire at harvest.

“Regional people shouldn’t have lesser services, particularly when it comes to comms.”