On a quiet street in Jimboomba that gets little-to-no reception and WiFi that’s just as bad, double-amputee Kyle Haslam wheels himself down a long driveway – alone and in need of help.
Disoriented and frightened, the 22-year-old suffers from epilepsy and has just come out of a seizure.
He needs an ambulance.
But for the second time this week, the 000 operator can’t hear him. His phone cuts in and out of service, and his WiFi connection is too poor to make an internet call.
For Mr Haslam, this isn’t a hypothetical – it’s reality.
“It has happened several times… Back in the day, it could be a few times a week,” he said.
“Trying to call an ambulance, it’s hard to get a proper connection.
“I’ve gotten through, but they couldn’t really hear us.”
Even when safety isn’t a factor, Mr Haslam regularly struggles with telecommunications.
He said he was often forced to wheel himself down his 40m driveway and onto the street, chasing better service.
“If it rains just the slightest bit, I can’t message any of my friends.”
Mr Haslam isn’t the only resident struggling with these issues.
Hundreds of Logan residents every year report WiFi and phone reception complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
More than 150 complaints were made in the last three months alone, and 180 in the previous quarter year.
Some say this has prompted a “huge number” of frustrated residents to search for alternative telecommunication providers.
One of these providers, Occom, claims to have seen a surge in consumers from the region switching over to their services from the major providers – mostly due to “frustrations over connectivity, drop outs and customer service”.
CEO Phillip Luo said issues were mostly related to lag time or latency, an “invisible barrier” he says is the real culprit behind connection issues.
He said while Mr Haslam’s issue appeared to be infrastructure related, stable internet would allow him to make internet-based calls.
Lag time, measured in milliseconds, is the delay between a user clicking a link or sending a request and the response time from the internet to load a webpage or register a game action.
“The demand for fast, low-latency internet is only growing, as Australians increasingly embrace AI, smart homes, streaming and cloud gaming,” Mr Luo said.
“Latency is starting to bother more and more people in everyday households.”
The worst time for lag is between 7 and 11pm at night – known as ‘internet rush hour’ – when people get home from work.
“High quality network services are becoming even more critical to meet the growing requirements for bandwidth, latency and stability and guarantee user experience,” Mr Luo said.
In 2020, Logan’s internet was deemed the worst in the region by an independent study, with reports of internet ‘black spots’ and businesses spending thousands so they can use their eftpos machines.
Since then, Logan City Council established a digital infrastructure program to advocate for and ensure residents can access “next-generation” telecommunications services to support the city’s rapidly growing population.
As part of this program, more than $2.4 million was dedicated in 2023 to boosting broadband infrastructure for about 350 homes in Logan Reserve and Chambers Flat.
Delivered by network operator Opticomm, the project would over the span of about 18 months upgrade existing broadband connections to high-speed Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) – the fastest and most reliable broadband connection, with speeds of up to one gigabit per second – and hopefully lay the foundation for future upgrades in the area.
