Member for Burt Matt Keogh says buck-passing between the NBN Co and Telstra could put the elderly at risk when they move into six new units recently built in an Armadale retirement village.
The village is unable to install nurse call devices in the Cohuna Drive units because they can’t be connected to a telephone line due to a lack of infrastructure in the ground nearby.
The nurse call devices are installed in the village’s other 24 units and allow residents to push a button on them or on a dongle they wear to call for a nurse in the event of a medical emergency.
The devices can’t be installed in the new units because they require a hard-wired telephone connection to operate.
The village administrator, who did not want to be named, said they contacted Telstra and NBN Co in July this year to organise a phone line connection to the units.
He said they received notice from Telstra they would make a “new connection from their exchange” to the units but when they found out there was nothing in the ground they reneged on their offer.
He said they withdrew an application for NBN Co to start the work because Telstra said they would do it but now NBN Co was waiting for the general rollout in the area, so the village was stuck in limbo.
He said moving to a system that didn’t require a hard-wired phone line was out of the question because it would require more than $100,000 of new technology.
“What we have is a very real situation were people are likely to fall over and possibly injure themselves and can’t get to a phone to make the connection to our emergency system, so they have no emergency help,” he said.
Mr Keogh criticised Telstra and NBN Co’s handling of the situation and said someone needed to put the infrastructure in the ground so the devices could be installed.
“The buck passing between the two of them and the confusion it’s generating means you have people that are not getting the level of care that they were expecting to be able to get,” he said.
“It will happen once NBN eventually gets around to doing what its doing.
“But the other issue there is we were all told NBN would start going live in this area in November, we’re at the end of November and that’s not happening.”
An NBN Co spokeswoman said in July NBN Co was asked to withdraw the application but they were investigating options for the village.
“This was done at their request and NBN only withdrew the application upon confirmation that alternative services were being provided,” she said.
“Since becoming aware of the village’s situation last month, NBN has been investigating options, given that the NBN network is still under construction and will not be ready for service until early next year.”
A Telstra spokesman said the area, which covers the retirement village, was identified by NBN Co in April 2016 as a brownfields rollout area under construction.
He said when a formal application for infrastructure for the new units was made to Telstra via the Smart Communities website, the village was advised that NBN Co should be contacted to arrange network connections.
“Telstra has offered an interim wireless service to these customers,” he said.
