Annalise Haseldine says her cafe's internet and sale system often cut out. (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)
The last thing a small business owner wants during peak tourist season is to lose internet connection and for a shop's payment system to drop out.
That's something South Australian cafe owner Annalise Haseldine says she has "constantly" experienced and has lost "a fair bit of sales".
Her cafe is in the popular seaside town Wallaroo on the Yorke Peninsula, which receives the National Broadband Network (NBN) service.
But Ms Haseldine said the influx of tourists over the summer interfered with her internet connection.
"We'd have really bad days where we couldn't connect to our [payment] terminal at all," she said.
"It's not just one person and one coffee, it's a table of six or a table of four for breakfast and coffee."
Ms Haseldine says the influx of tourists impacts on the local internet connection. (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)
When her payment terminals were down, Ms Haseldine said potential customers had to visit the nearest ATM and often ended up choosing a different cafe.
She said she got fed up and this year made the switch to not one, but two, mobile data plans, hoping "one would surely work".
"We've got a phone that's connected to Telstra and another phone that's connected to Optus," she said.
Problem worsens after 3G shut-off
Edithburgh Deli and Newsagency owner Lesley Tilbrook said an unreliable mobile tower connection had a "huge effect" on her business, as both phone and EFTPOS cut out "several times a night" during peak season.
"As people ring up for orders, we often get the connection but then the actual call drops out," Ms Tilbrook said.
"It can take several phone calls to take one order … which is frustrating when you've got customers to serve, you're cooking, [fulfilling] orders, and the phone's ringing like crazy because the same person is still trying to get through three or four times."
Ms Haseldine now pays two mobile phone bills to get a reliable internet connection. (ABC North & West SA: Viki Ntafillis)
Ms Tilbrook said she had to change to satellite NBN for better internet and buy a Telstra booster for stronger phone connection.
"Because we don't have the 5G yet, shutting the 3G off has affected a lot of people," she said.
"We seem to keep upgrading, from 3G to 4G to 5G, but we can't seem to keep up with the actual roll-out of it."
Troubridge Hotel Motel owner Terry Austin was in a similar boat in Edithburgh.
Terry Austin says the phone and sales system drop out during peak season. (Supplied: Terry Austin)
"It happens all the time, as soon as the holiday period comes on," he said.
"Same with the phone system with the NBN … we've had it drop out for several hours.
"You could tear your hair out, the problems you have with it."
High speeds, high prices
Telecommunications expert and Flinders University Associate Professor Paul Gardner-Stephen said the strongest NBN connection was fibre to property, while fibre to the node, ADSL and VDSL could experience slower speeds when lots of people in an area shared that system.
"Where it gets worse, particularly when we're talking tourist season where lots of people come in with their mobile devices, is if you're using … mobile data," he said.
"Everybody going into that area with their phones and devices is sharing that same set of frequencies and that can really bog the speed down.
"You get these towns that are tourist spots in summer, the rest of the year the load is much lower, so the telcos will tend to provision based on that normal kind of load."
Paul Gardner-Stephen says tourist towns could experience slower internet speed during peak season. (ABC News: Annabel Francis)
He said implementing high-speed internet around Australia would come at a cost.
"It's a bit of a trade-off for them [telcos]," Mr Gardner-Stephen said.
"If the telcos were to provide full-speed internet, everywhere, all the time, that would drive up the cost of everyone's bills because of the additional infrastructure that they would have to operate and maintain on a national basis."
In a statement, Telstra regional general manager SA Michael Patterson said the telco upgraded its mobile sites in Kadina and Moonta Bay last year, and planned to build a new mobile site at Edithburgh.
"We're looking into building two more mobile sites in the Yorke Peninsula region under co-investment programs," he said.
He said Telstra invested $4.3 billion in its mobile network in regional Australia between the 2017 and 2024 financial years.
Point of sale systems rely on internet connection. (Unsplash: naipo.de)
An Optus spokesperson said it planned to accelerate the number of 5G sites in regional Australia to 1,500 by the end of 2028 and 2,444 by the end of 2030, adding it spent about $1 billion every year to improve their network.
"Our coverage reaches about 98.5 per cent of the Australia population."
Improving the network
Last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised $3 billion to upgrade hundreds of thousands of NBN connections and speed up internet services across Australia ahead of the upcoming election.
In a statement, a federal government spokesperson says it is conducting a national audit of mobile coverage, including identifying black spots on the Yorke and Eyre peninsulas.
"The audit is measuring mobile coverage and performance across the country," the spokesperson said.
"[It involves] … drive testing of around 180,000km of regional and rural roads every year for three years, static testing in up to 77 locations across all states and territories and crowd-sourced data to identify coverage black spots to help target future investment."
Mr Gardner-Stephen said there were ways people could boost their internet connection.
"Regardless of what connection you're on, have a look at your ISP [internet service provider] … you want a low contention ratio, or high typical evening speeds.
"If you're in an area where you care and depend on good data speeds when you get an influx of tourists, you want to get off of anything that is wireless and have a wired approach."