Patchy and unreliable internet is an ongoing problem for the tourist town which struggles to keep up with the increased demand, especially during peak periods.

The Port Fairy Community Market's 70 stall holders could not accept any electronic payments for three hours on Saturday.

Market manager Pam McGoldrick said while the internet was notoriously unreliable, it was the worst the market had experienced and left stallholders "really quite distressed".

"They couldn't sell anything, so they're standing there unable to sell their goods," Mrs McGoldrick said. "It was busy but we couldn't make any sales. The customers were quite disappointed too.

"We put up with it and just go 'oh it's just Port Fairy, that's just how it is here' but it shouldn't be. This was costing small business. This is their livelihood and they were standing there unable to trade."

"It's been patchy before but it's never been down where we haven't been able to do anything for an extended period of time."

Port Fairy Folk Festival president John Young said the festival was without internet and EFTPOS for about five minutes on Saturday but he was aware of other businesses connectivity challenges across the weekend.

"We've been working towards cashless operations in the arena so if we want to do that successfully, we really do need to have a reliable service like everybody else," Mr Young said.

"We've got to sit down with the provider Telstra. You can't just ignore this as a one-off weekend load that will either carry the load or not. There's got to be appropriate measures taken to ensure continuity for all service users."

IN OTHER NEWS:

Port Fairy Street Fair co-organiser Kerry Lee encouraged customers on social media to bring cash on Saturday, after her stallholders were also unable to accept electronic payments.

"We certainly don't want our stallholders to be saying it was a wonderful event and plenty of people but the internet doesn't work. It's not a good look for the festival or for the street fair," Ms Lee said.

Port Fairy IGA owner Colin Cleary said while the supermarket did not experience any EFTPOS issues, internet service throughout the weekend and even on Tuesday, once the majority of visitors had left, was very poor.

Star of the West Hotel publican Caroline Lumley said it was also affected by the outage. "Telstra was down," Mrs Lumley said. "A lot of machines kept on declining. Friday and Saturday were pretty bad."

Massage therapist Michael Davey has been without EFTPOS since Saturday, and has had to rely on customers paying cash or direct deposit payments into his bank account. He said he felt for other small business owners who were affected and trying to get back on their feet after COVID-19.

Telstra regional general manager Steve Tinker said as the festival goes from strength to strength "it gets very busy on our mobile network".

"We brought in a temporary mobile base station to help cope with the load during the festival and we also recently upgraded Port Fairy to 5G, which can provide higher speeds and more capacity for 5G enabled devices," Mr Tinker said.

"We design and manage our mobile network to provide the best connectivity available and plan for peaks and troughs in demand as best we can. We constantly enhance and optimise our coverage and capacity to cater to shifting customer needs.

"We also encourage business owners talk to their bank about connecting their EFTPOS terminals to their nbn or Wi-Fi connection to prevent delays in processing transactions," Mr Tinker said.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content:

Now just one tap with our new app: Digital subscribers now have the convenience of faster news, right at your fingertips with The Standard:

Have you signed up to The Standard's daily newsletter and breaking news emails? You can register below and make sure you are up to date with everything that's happening in the south-west.