Last week's communications outage which affected Optus customers showed just how reliant we have become on the mobile communications for day to day activities.

The outage, which impacted 10 million Australians meant consumers and business owner were unable to make or accept payments, make telephone calls or access the internet.

This has brought criticism from Nationals leader, David Littleproud who is now calling for mandated domestic mobile roaming in regional, rural and remote Australia.

A domestic mobile roaming service is where a mobile network operator is able to roam onto the network of another mobile network operator, so they can provide services outside of their own network coverage.

“We must ensure the outage that occurred with Optus never happens again,” Mr Littleproud said. “We need a common sense approach to this problem. By starting mobile roaming in regional, rural and remote areas we can target it in the areas of greatest need, while potential pressures of roaming on metropolitan network capacity can be worked through before rolling out in the densely populated capital cities.

Keeping cash as king

 Also "cashing" in on the outage to promote their cause is organisation, CashWelcome. This group is an initiative of the cash industry in co-operation with the ATM industry.

"Power, internet and EFTPOS systems can all fail and leave us stranded," Jason Bryce, co-ordinator of the Cash Welcome campaign said. "Only cash is reliable 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

"They can't build a reliable cashless payments system that is always online so banks need to stop closing branches and ATMs. When cash is not available or widely accepted, Australia is vulnerable to outages," said Jason Bryce.

CashWelcome ran an awareness campaign earlier this year raising concerns about the reduction of cash in society.

"Sharon", a staff member at Gourmet Gecko Café in Lightning Ridge said she has seen a decrease in cash transactions in the café with most people using EFTPOS.

However, she doubted cash would ever totally disappear, especially in regional areas.

"Ninety per cent of our older customers use cash," Sharon said. "It's still an important thing to use in the country and with opal miners being paid cash, there's still plenty in the community."

Mr Bryce said he has a petition with 130,000 signatures (and growing daily) calling for a legal right to choose cash and access cash.

A push is on to keep cash as an option.

Communication vital in natural disasters

“The urgency for the regions (in regard to reliable communications) is the tyranny of distance we face and the threat of natural disaster emergencies such as the upcoming bushfire season,” Mr Littleproud said.

Australia doesn’t allow for emergency mobile roaming, (although it does allow for emergency calls to 000), which was a significant safety issue in regional areas, according to Mr Littleproud.

“The ACCC recently completed an inquiry into regional mobile infrastructure and found that emergency mobile roaming is beneficial during times of natural disasters or other emergencies.

"Australians deserve and need adequate and reliable mobile coverage now. This week’s outage proves the need for mandated domestic roaming, which would share all the towers between all the telcos. More importantly, mandated roaming is critical as a safety and emergency response.”

Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland has announced a government inquiry into the Optus outage. The senate and the Victorian government have also announced inquiries.