But Ryan and Amy Garaty, who live on Chads Creek Road with their seven-month-old son Bailey, are not laughing. In fact Amy has been reduced to tears on many occasions.

They are 40 minutes out of Gresford and live in an isolated area and have not had a landline since January 23.

And their mobile phone doesn’t work up there either, unless they drive 30 minutes up a steep hill on the property they manage.

But this is not the first time the phone line has been out, it is a regular occurrence, sometimes even on a monthly basis for weeks at a time.

This time though they were initially told the phone line would not be fixed until March 30.

“But they said they would send us a satellite phone which would give us service up there,” Amy said.

“We were told it would arrive on February 12 and that someone would deliver it and show me how to work it.

“So I waited at home all day and it didn’t arrive, so I drove into Gresford at 5pm to ring them and they said it had been delivered.

“As it turned out, it was sent to East Gresford Post Office and was going to be delivered by the mail contractor.

“But then I found out it was just an ordinary mobile phone which won’t work up there anyway.”

The Garatys are no further ahead and received an email on Thursday (they have satellite internet) asking if their service was still faulty.

The email also said there are delays with the provision of satellite handsets so they won’t be receiving one.

While the couple has asked for monetary compensation, Amy said  it is not a done deal  on Telstra’s part but it wouldn’t go anywhere close to remedying the situation.

“They sent me a form I have to fill in to see if we qualify for it first,” she said.

“And that was just before we were to receive the satellite phone.

“But that’s all changed now and it’s one drama after another to try and get the situation fixed.

“What if Bailey got sick or Ryan got hurt and we needed an ambulance?

“In this day and age it’s just not good enough.

“I have to drive into Gresford so I can ring Telstra and I just keep getting the run around from them.

“We thought the satellite phone would be good, at least we could talk to family and Ryan could use it for business, but now they are telling us we can’t get one and the job has been closed.

“I just don’t know where to go from here.”

On Friday night the Dungog Chronicle received a call from the general manager Telstra Hunter Central Coast Chris Cusack who said technicians had been assigned to work on the fault over the weekend.

“The advice I have received is this is a long cable run and the repairs may take some time,” Mr Cusack said.

“To ensure the customer is provided with a service we have arranged for an interim service using a satellite phone that will be sent to the customer on Tuesday.

“This is not the experience we want for our customers and we are working hard to reduce delays that have resulted from an increase in fault volumes.

“ In response, we have taken steps to improve the situation.

“We are bringing additional technicians on board who will help us to get through significantly more jobs per day and maximising the time our technicians are in the field.

“Where appropriate we are balancing our resources to prioritise fault restorations versus installing new services.

“We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused by these delays and thank them for their patience.

“We do proactively plan for seasonal weather events. Unfortunately this year, extreme weather events hit us earlier than usual, and were more geographically dispersed, leaving us less flexibility to move resources around the country.

“We have seen storms and heavy rainfall along the east coast over recent months, in particular in Queensland, combined with bushfires in South Australia and Western Australia.

“As a result, fault volumes are currently triple the normal volume across the country, this is placing strain on our network and operations resources, which in turn means there are unusually long delays in fault rectification and new connections in some parts of the country.

As of 8am on Monday morning, the Garaty’s landline still wasn’t working.

Prior to hearing from Mr Cusack, Mrs Garaty had been in touch with the Communications Ombudsman and Federal Member for Paterson Bob Baldwin to expedite an outcome to the situation.