Dingee Optus reception suffers after technical fault

Daniel Straub believes he has been without coverage for coming up to four weeks. There was a period of maybe two weeks when he was unable to make or receive calls at all.

He has spoken to a nine or 10 of neighbours also having trouble reception for their Optus phones.

Read more: Marong mobile blackout wakes retirees fears

Mr Straub said SMS and voice calls had been affected, with very limited reception during the period.

"That was coming from several locals here in Dingee, to the point where another neighbour was leaving his phone at home, because there was no point carting it with him," Mr Straub said.

"You pull your phone out to make a phone call, it says you've got three bars, then it drops down to nothing and goes to SOS."

Optus customers living at Marong's Big4 lifestyle village have been experiencing similar problems with their mobile phone reception.

It's frustrating for Mr Straub to be without reception at home, where he owns a small farm. He also works for a small engineering company in Dingee, often working from home.

Safety is also an issue for Mr Straub and his family.

He fears that if his six-year-old daughter had a serious asthma attack, her school would be unable to contact him.

"We live 45 kilometres from Bendigo and about 50, 55 kilometres from Echuca, so emergencies things like that can be a really big issue," Mr Straub said.

"I've got a lot going on on the phone, I do a lot of my work from home. The phone and the internet really is necessary in this day and age."

Read more: Phone reception headaches span the region

Mr Straub said he, his mother, and his brother have all contacted Optus, and all received different responses, variously: that they lived in a mobile blackspot, that the service tower had been turned down, or that they were too far away from the tower.

He said he had told Optus he would not be paying his bill until the reception issue was completely fixed.

An Optus spokesperson said a technical fault meant customers in the Dingee area may have experienced intermittent network access issues to 3G mobile services since September 12.

The spokesperson said mobile services around Dingee had been fully restored.

"We apologise to our customers affected by the outage and thank them for their patience while services were being restored," the spokesperson said.

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