THE region’s residents will not be able to make critical triple-0 phone calls during prolonged blackouts under the National Broadband Network (NBN) roll out, according to a local council bureaucrat.
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Tumut Shire Council general manager Bob Stewart, who also is chairman of the council's emergency management committee, is calling on the government to address the shortfall, which will see residents unable to make emergency calls during blackouts unless they have an uninterrupted power source.
“It’s another cost on ratepayers,” Mr Stewart said.
“This has not been out in the public arena.”
Mr Stewart believed it fell on the government to fix, not on residents being forced to buy an uninterrupted power service or a satellite phone, which is expensive to both purchase and operate.
NBN corporate affairs state manager Kelly Stevens admitted that devices connected over the network would not work during a power blackout and encouraged people to have a charged mobile phone for back-up.
