Telstra south-west manager Bill Mundy addresses customers at the crisis community forum in November.
A FEDERAL government inquiry into the south-west’s Telstra outage last November will continue with four forums to be held today and tomorrow.
The forums are aimed at allowing businesses and community service providers, including health and emergency services, to tell the inquiry on how the blackout affected them.
Today’s sessions will be held at Camperdown’s Killara Centre from 11am-1pm and Warrnambool’s Lighthouse Theatre from 5pm-7pm.
Tomorrow’s sessions will be held at Portland Civic Hall from 10am-noon and Hamilton Performing Arts Centre from 2.30pm-4.30pm.
Great South Coast Group chairman Chris O’Connor said businesses and individuals affected by the Telstra blackout should attend the forums if they wanted their voices heard.
“We’re still measuring the economic and social impacts of the outage on our region and we may not have a complete picture for some time,” Cr O’Connor said.
“In the meantime, these forums will provide opportunity for businesses and people to explain how the (Telstra) exchange fire and subsequent loss of communications really affected them.”
Public submissions to the inquiry, which the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy is holding, will close on January 25.
Submissions can be made through www.dbcde.gov.au/warrnambool_inquiry and department representatives will be present at the forums to answer questions.
