Telstra Southern NSW regional general manager Chris Taylor has said it could take months to restore full mobile and landline services following the Dunns Road and Green Valley bushfires.
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The bushfires damaged Telstra's equipment at Tumbarumba and destroyed a mobile phone tower at Jingellic, cutting off services for a number of towns in the South West Slopes region.
Mr Taylor said Telstra had started a "prolonged program" to progressively restore fixed lines and services.
"We are expecting, given the state of state of south-east NSW and Snowy Valleys area, it will probably be months before we really start to clean this up properly."
Mr Taylor said Telstra was still responding to the northern NSW bushfires and a new round of fires in South Australia.
"Because of the scale of bushfire activity...we have got to treat this is a national incident and a national restoration," he said.
"At the moment, while there are still weather events and risk going on and fires burning, we are in the phase of restoring essential services; our priority is to restore mobile services so we can support emergency services and also try to get a communities connected.
"Once we can get into communities, our priorities are guided by the emergency control centre on where we can go and where it is safe to go and we start doing a detailed assessment of damage to our cables and assets."
Telstra's Tumut exchange was also recovering from an alleged arson attack three weeks before the Dunns Road bushfire that cut off mobile, landline and internet services in the town for multiple days.
Mr Taylor said an '"exchange on wheels" had been brought into the town to provide services last month and it had stayed operational throughout the bushfire.
"From New Year's Eve, we lost services at Mount Ikes and Khancoban, Tumbarumba and Jingellic," he said.
"They were initially all power related and over the last week we have managed to restore mobile services [except for Jingellic] as unfortunately once we were able to gain access to the area it was discovered that the Jingellic mobile tower has been destroyed by the fire.
"What we are looking at doing in Jingellic at the moment an attempt to install a repeater aerial in one of the community location to try and have some mobile coverage.
"We are also installing a satellite cell on wheels at the neighbouring village of Walwa."
Mr Taylor said the Wagga Telstra Shop had donated three satellite phones to the Riverina Highlands Rural Fire Service control centre in Tumut.
Telstra mobile customers will be able to view websites with critical bushfire information, such as Fires Near Me and the Bureau of Meteorology, without incurring data usage charges on their devices during January.
Telstra's payphones are currently free to use in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia and will the payphones equipped with Wi-Fi will provide free internet via the 'Telstra Air' network.
Mr Taylor said he was not sure which payphones in South West Slopes were equipped with Wi-Fi, but urged users to look for a wireless internet icon on the side or roof of the payphones.
Unmetered websites on Telstra mobile internet:
State and Territory rural fire services for information about current fires and responses:
- New South Wales Rural Fire Service
- Victorian Country Fire Association
- South Australian Country Fire Service
- Tasmania Fire Service
- Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services Agency
- Queensland Rural Fire Service
- Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service
- Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services
Government agencies for emergency response information:
Other critical information websites:
*Excludes ABC iView content and radio streaming