A spokesman for the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network said it had asked Telstra for an explanation. "There appears to have been an increase in the number of regions covered by mass service disruption exemptions," he said. Nearly a third of the delays that Telstra flagged through public notices were blamed on a shortage of local staff and having to fly in technicians from other states. It led to a backlog across the country. The information comes from more than 330 notices published on Telstra’s website since 2009 and analysed by Fairfax Media. Normally, Telstra must install new phone lines within five days in cities or 15 days in remote areas. It must repair faults within three days and turn up for appointments on time.

Consumers are entitled to $14.52 compensation for every missed appointment and for every working day a new phone line is delayed, rising to $48.40 after the fifth day. These payments are available for delays on fixed voice services only. Telstra executive director of networks Mike Wright said extreme weather this year had put the network "under duress more times than I think I have ever seen in my career". "We had an impact on a huge length of Queensland. We had probably five to six times the impact from that one storm and related floods than we had in many of the major events that hit in many years previous. As a consequence you have to move a lot of resources in," he said. Mobilising Telstra's national workforce was "absolutely the right thing to do" and not a reflection of staff shortages, he said. He also rejected claims the network was decaying, saying major faults were always weather related. But unions and competitors said more faults reflected staff shortages and a poorly maintained network struggling to cope.

Last financial year there was a 58 per cent increase in complaints from consumers about delays getting internet connections and a 40 per cent increase in complaints about telephone connections. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman attributed it to an increase in weather damage and staff shortages. Ombudsman Simon Cohen said his agency did not have the power to assess Telstra’s claims about extreme weather. In July, two of Australia’s largest telephone companies made official complaints to the Australian Communications and Media Authority about the impact Telstra’s network faults were having on their own customers. "In [our] view, the incidence of faults and protracted restoration periods may not be simply due to the damage directly caused by heavy rains or severe weather conditions. Rather, the service disruptions may be indicative of an inherent failure by Telstra to sufficiently maintain the condition of the copper access network, coupled with a failure to maintain a workforce sufficient to reasonably respond to faults," said one letter seen by Fairfax. The Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency's latest annual report shows Telstra failed two performance hurdles in 2012-13 – getting new connections done on time in urban and rural areas. Telstra blamed the failure on bad weather, a lack of seasonal staff from New Zealand, and more complex work due to more fibre-optic cable in the network.

Unions blame the higher fault rate on cuts to Telstra’s technical workforce since privatisation in favour of cheaper subcontractors. There had been "massive amounts of band-aiding on a very decaying system", assistant secretary of the Victorian branch of the Communications Workers Union, John Ellery, said. Moving staff around the country was "robbing Peter to pay Paul", he added. A spokeswoman for the ACMA said there was no time limit for so-called mass service disruption notices or how many Telstra could issue for staffing reasons. "The ACMA is currently considering Telstra’s compliance with the Customer Service Guarantee benchmarks for the period 1 July 2012 – 30 June 2013," she added. Companies that rely on Telstra’s ubiquitous copper network to reach their own customers said the lack of Telstra technicians left them stranded. TPG’s general manager, Craig Levy, said Telstra technicians missed 3688 appointments to connect new TPG customers this year, up from 897 missed appointments in 2012.

"We have never seen anything like this before," he said. ‘‘We are forced to rely heavily on Telstra personnel for the provisioning of our home phone service. They will not permit anyone but their own employees to touch the [copper wire] which is what we use to supply our home phone service." He estimates delays cost TPG about $500,000 in lost revenue and refunds, and saw 1000 new customers cancel their service because connections took too long. "We had more complaints than we have ever had before because we were effectively on the back foot having to give customers refunds, having to ease the concerns of customers who were re-scheduled multiple times," Mr Levy said. Mr Wright said Telstra technicians were still available to do work when mass service disruption notices were issued but that "we are going to take a bit longer to get to you because we are under an overload condition".

iiNet’s chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, said this year's experience raised questions about Telstra’s ability to keep the copper network in working order. He said about 32 per cent of the faults experienced by iiNet’s customers this year were due to faults on Telstra’s infrastructure, up from 18 per cent of faults in 2011. "To me it reflects that Telstra no longer has the resources at its disposal to manage the copper network to community expectations," Mr Dalby said. The copper network had become a "liability" for Telstra and it should not be seen as a building block for the NBN, he said. The government is currently considering buying the copper network for its national broadband network, rather than replacing it with fibre-optic cables. "Whoever takes on the ownership of the asset faces significant remediation costs and I would say a long time to get that copper into a state that we would have confidence that it could service the country for ten to 15 years, [or] until such a time as we get fibre to the home,’’ Mr Dalby said.

With Michael Lee