The Otago Regional Council wrote to Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith, Minster for Emergency Management and Recovery Mark Mitchell and Minister for Rural Communities Mark Patterson over concerns about what had happened in the region following the October 23 gales.
The severe winds knocked out power to more than 25,000 households and businesses and cellphone coverage.
The council said improvements to infrastructure were needed, phones should be able to switch networks in emergencies and high-risk areas should be better identified for weather events.
Mr Goldsmith wrote that telecommunications were considered lifeline services under the Civil Defence emergency management framework.
Telecommunications operators were linked into the National Emergency Management Agency’s response and were working to get cell towers running on generator power as quickly as possible.
Many generators were deployed into the region to restore connectivity while electricity was being restored, Mr Goldsmith said.
He acknowledged cell towers in rural and remote areas could be hard to restore in emergency situations, due to access issues.
Mr Goldsmith and Mr Mitchell secured funding of $6.4 million earlier this year to upgrade batteries on rural and remote cell towers from around six-eight hours’ battery life to 24 hours.
‘‘This will make a big difference as it will ensure connectivity is in place in the immediate aftermath of an event, and it will give more time for telecommunications operators to put generators in place,’’ he wrote.
The $6.4m would take the total amount of funding for battery upgrades to about $12m overall and meant about 300-350 cell towers in rural areas would receive upgrades.
About 100 of these upgrades had been made already.
National Infrastructure Funding and Financing (Niff) had been running the battery upgrade programme on behalf of the Crown and was exploring areas that would receive upgrades with the additional $6.4m that had been allocated.
‘‘Areas that have already had upgrades were those impacted by previous weather events, and so I expect Niff will also be taking the recent Southland storm into account when identifying further areas to receive upgrades.’’
In terms of interoperability in relation to 111 calls, ‘‘I note that there are already arrangements in place between the mobile network operators to allow people to roam across all networks for 111 calls.
‘‘That means, for example, that if One NZ and Spark coverage is down, their customers would still connect to 2degrees’ network to make a 111 call.’’
Mr Goldsmith said in the coming years calling via satellite to cellphone would become available.
‘‘Once this service is more widespread, access to communications in an emergency will be significantly improved.’’
Mr Goldsmith agreed local radio was crucial for public safety and communication in emergencies.
He said the government, through NZ On Air, funded important radio platforms such as RNZ and Community Access Media which provided critical lifelines for communities during crises.
