Thanks to the efforts of the VFF, Telstra have considered and agreed to deferring upgrades to mobile phone towers at Minyip, Warracknabeal and Dimboola until after the harvest season.
It’s critical that farmers have mobile connectivity during this time to ensure operations can continue and to ensure the safety of farmers and workers.
VFF Transport & Infrastructure Committee Chair Ryan Milgate, who made representations to Telstra on behalf of local farmers said it was a sensible decision to defer the upgrades.
“We all know how important phones are for communications for day to day, not to mention in the midst of harvest when plans change 15 times a day depending on grain quality and breakdowns.”
“There’s some people running with headers on the core network using the mobile signal to get their corrections to their autosteer, so it would have been very problematic to remove that connectivity from our area in that peak period.”
The VFF thanks Telstra for listening and acting after we raised these concerns.