Fire station holds open day

The Fire and Rescue NSW Station 340 Umina has held an open day at its station at Trafalgar Ave, Woy Woy, on Saturday, May 10.

The day was described as "successful with over 1000 people coming through our gates".

SOURCE:

Social media, 11 May 2025

Station 340 Umina, Fire and Rescue NSW

Internet outage in The Bays leads to calls for action

A four-day internet outage in The Bays over Easter has led to calls for action to improve NBN services in the area.

The Bays Community Group has prepared a report based on a survey of local households which has returned reports of poor performance and stability.

The survey was held after an NBN outage of about four days over Easter due to an overhead wire being caught by the recycling truck.

"The results indicate low levels of satisfaction and significant concerns regarding outages and the stability and performance of internet services in the Bays area," said the report prepared by Bays resident Mr Simon Spencer.

"The survey also indicated a high level of critical business use of the internet, both for small businesses and professionals living in the Bays area but working from home.

"Analysis of survey results also suggested that while download performance and stability was an issue, upstream bandwidth was also a significant impediment to community members using Teams, Zoom and other video conferencing solutions.

"The fibre and copper internet infrastructure to the Bays area was raised as a concern, with multiple single points of failure being illustrated by the recent outages, but also the significant potential for signal degradation due to corrosion in the copper network in a coastal area."

The report found that sections of the copper dated back 30 to 50 years, with paper-insulated cores in some older trunks.

The report stated: "The current network in place to support the Bays Community at Phegans Bay, Horsfield Bay and Woy Woy Bay remains based on this fibre-to-the-node design, with NBN optic fibre terminating at a node on Woy Woy Rd and then utilising a legacy copper network from the node to each household in the Bays area."

"Research suggests that Woy Woy Bay and Pearl Beach was included in early Telstra and NBN testing zones, potentially due to the known difficulty of maintaining stability in these areas."

The survey was completed over a three-week period by over 30 households.

"A consistent response was that households were not getting anything close to the speed that they were subscribing to.

"Over 54 per cent of the community experienced significant outages or service interruptions daily or weekly; 62 per cent experienced daily, weekly or monthly service interruptions.

"Less than five per cent felt that they never experienced network interruptions

Of community households that responded to the survey, 73 per cent felt that their work, study or access to internet services had been significantly impacted."

The report noted that several households "had elected to purchase Starlink as a primary or backup to the NBN due to the performance of NBN services".

Respondents reported that there were no plans to upgrade the area to a fibre-to-the-premises service.

The report recommended "remediation work ... be taken to improve the performance of the copper network including inspection and servicing of components and trenches".

It also recommended a range of possible options including an increase in the number of fibre "nodes", provision of a fibre-to-the-kerb, and provision of fibre-to-the-premises.

SOURCE:

Newsletter, 15 May 2025

Marie Davies, The Bays Community Group