Mobile services and internet in Orange were heavily impacted on Thursday at lunchtime despite Telstra’s website not showing outages.
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Mobile service on Telstra devices had been patchy all morning, but at about 1.00pm on Thursday, office workers poured into streets asking if the internet had gone down.
Telstra confirmed work had been occurring on the Moulder Street tower on Thursday morning, and many businesses and people around town reported problems with personal mobiles and work networks.
Cinnabar in Kite Street had no coverage from 10am.
According to staff member Alix Riley the lack of a working efpos machine meant only customers with cash were able to purchase items.
"We've had people walking out or putting things aside and saying they're coming back with cash but we don't know if they will come back," Ms Riley said.
Ms Riley said she called the bank to see if it could help but was told as it was a Telstra issue nothing could be done.
The Central Western Daily has also have only intermittent Telstra coverage since about 10am, with service completely crashing at about 12.30pm.
Factory Espresso was also affected by the outage, with owner Ruby Gleeson saying it had made workflow “difficult”.
“Our eftos machine has been down and it’s significantly slowed down the pace we like to keep.”
She said customers had been “very understanding”, and people had taken a seat and waited until service became available to pay, or paid in cash.
“We were very fortunate so many people had cash, otherwise we would have had to refuse service,” she said.
However, several other businesses along Kite street had service, with Blowes Real Estate and Bullets and Bits still functioning as normal, although employees reported personal phones down.
Telstra area general manager Michael Marom confirmed the Moulder Street tower was receiving upgrades.
“Telstra is currently undergoing capacity upgrades to the Moulder Street tower in Orange, until the 28th of September,” he said.
“During this time some customers may experience interruptions or degraded service.
“We apologise for the disruption as we continue to improve and upgrade our networks.”