The EFTM podcast – ISP recommendations, Free to Air reception issues, Mesh dramas and Optus Soccer Data blitz

EFTM Podcast
Episode: ISP recommendations, Free to Air reception woes, Mesh dramas and Optus Soccer Data blitz
Date: 11 August 2026
Host: Trevor Long
Guest: Jane McNamara (Optus)

[00:00:03] Voice Over: The EFTM Podcast. Talkback Technology. Got a question about tech? Trev's here to help. Not sure what to buy? Ask Trev. Australia's number one talkback technology podcast.

[00:00:33] Voice Over: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTM Podcast with Trevor Long.

[00:00:44] Voice Over: Real Australians, real questions, every week.

[00:00:50] Voice Over: You can text Trev now, thanks to Vodafone, on 0477 657 657.

[00:01:09] Trevor Long: G'day, g'day. Great to be back in Sydney after a weekend in Perth, and we'll tell you about that shortly because you would have seen Two Blokes Talking Optus on Sunday. I'm going to talk to Jane McNamara, who we spoke to on that show. We're going to talk to her here because you might not have heard Two Blokes Talking Tech. We also have a slightly more in-depth chat about the data that Optus got out of the football/soccer games at Optus Stadium last weekend. That was a fun little trip. It was nice to be back in Perth. I didn't plan it well. We ended up just being back-to-back busy and the rain was horrible, so I didn't get to see anyone I would have normally caught up with. So that was a pain. But the place has grown up, the place is looking nice, it's doing well. The stadium's beautiful. The whole precinct around the stadium is spectacular. And it looks like they're doing a whole redevelopment around it as well, which looks spectacular. I think they're building it so that it can have like a racetrack. They're going to have the supercars there, which is wild to me, but I guess you build it and they will come. And it's cool – it's a precinct so close to the city that it all just kind of works. Huge park area that's kind of closed off now for construction, related to plans for an annual motorsport event. The multi-use track will support a range of activities, including cycling. Cycle paths, accessibility, an outdoor amphitheatre. Perth has a great set of parklands already along the river on the city side, and now they've got this cool bridge that goes over to the stadium and that's going to be a big park area as well. All I would say to Perth is, I think you need to up your public transport game. There were just 200 buses lined up outside the stadium – buses are such an inefficient form of transport. I don't think Perth's big enough for a metro, but they've got a train line. Most of the people were not catching any form of transport other than a bus – maybe I'm wrong. If you're in Perth, tell me how I'm wrong. If you're building this park, you don't want to encourage cars, but just dig a big hole and put a car park underground and charge crazy money for the parking. But yeah, gorgeous stadium, they did a really good job with that. It's a lovely stadium. I can imagine it packed for an AFL game, especially the local derby – they call it a derby over there, not a derby, you've got to know your Perth vernacular, folks. We were there as guests of Optus to do a sponsored podcast and everything else that came with it, which is good for them, but yeah, really enjoyed the time there. So we'll talk to Jane McNamara from Optus shortly, and we'll also take your calls – we've got a bunch of people wanting assistance, so we'll get to them today and try to help you out. Next week I will bring you that interview with Michele Butti from Amazon, and more calls. We've got a couple more weeks before we wrap up for the mid-season break, because that's what's going to happen when I go to IFA in Berlin and then on for a family trip in the US across September – so pretty much no EFTM podcast during September. Maybe I should just call this Your Tech Life again, bring back the logo, go retro. I've probably missed the 10-year anniversary, haven't I – it's 15 years or so, I have to check. How long has this been running, and when did I start Your Tech Life? I should look into that – it's been way more than 10 years, it's been 16, 17 years. I'm thinking of 2007 – so it's coming up 20 years next year of Your Tech Life. Holy hell, because it was 2007 I started doing Chip for Brains, so it'd be coming up on 20 years since I started doing radio, since I've been in tech. And I feel like it's 2008-ish, maybe '09, when I started Your Tech Life – I have to look into it anyway. I appreciate your support over all those years. Let's get on with it.

[00:06:17] Voice Over: Tech, cars, lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trev Long. You can text Trev now thanks to Vodafone on 0477 657 657.

[00:06:31] Trevor Long: Great to have your company and happy to help wherever I can. Marty's on the line. G'day, Marty.

Marty — Channel 7 reception dropping out

[00:06:35] Marty: G'day, mate. How you going?

[00:06:36] Trevor Long: Yeah, really good. What can I do for you?

[00:06:38] Marty: Well, in the last 7 to 9 weeks, for some unknown reason, I've been dropping Channel 7 on the TV. All the Channel 7 channels have been disappearing and I'll continually have to do an update scan for the channels again and back again, 3 or 4 times in the last 7 to 9 weeks. And it's still doing my head in. I don't know what's going on.

[00:06:59] Trevor Long: It's not a great loss losing Channel 7 though, is it? Just joking, just joking – I'm sure there's something you wanted to watch there. The netball, the Comm Games was where I was attached, my daughter was desperate to watch that whenever it was on. Do you have other TVs in the home?

[00:07:17] Marty: Yes, we do. Yes.

[00:07:18] Trevor Long: No issues with those?

[00:07:20] Marty: No.

[00:07:20] Trevor Long: And they're connected to the same antenna?

[00:07:23] Marty: Yes.

[00:07:24] Trevor Long: And are any of those TVs of a size or scale that you could move them to the location of this one to test?

[00:07:31] Marty: I could do that. Yes.

[00:07:33] Trevor Long: Before that – the thing is it's going to be a reception issue, and the reason it happens is because your reception for television isn't direct to you. There's a billion things that happen in between: buildings, trees, interference, a whole range of things. And then there's the issue that no two TVs are the same. If they all use the same digital receiver, they'd all pick up the signal the same, but different TV models might have a stronger ability to pick up or decode the signal. So the reason I say take another TV into that space – unplug the antenna from the one that's not working and plug it into that other one. Does it ever suffer the same problems? You might have to do it for a day, but if not, you've isolated that it's the television. If it does still have a problem, then you've isolated that it's either the cable, the antenna, or the strength of the signal – so you might replace the cable and see whether that has any impact. The other thing is at Bunnings there's a thing called an inline amplifier – it's not a bad thing to look at. It has a USB plug you can probably plug into your TV's USB port, and then your antenna goes into it, and there's an output antenna socket. What it does is essentially clean up the signal – it was built for when analog TV was switched off and 4G took over, and that can interfere with some antennas. So it's meant to eliminate the interference from 4G and give you a better signal. That's only about $30. You might not be able to get it in store, might have to buy it online – some people used to call them a 4G or LTE filter, but on the Bunnings website they call it an inline amplifier. One of those might help. That's a cheap thing to try before calling out an antenna guy to go, 'mate, what are you seeing here', and probably putting a booster on the line.

[00:09:39] Marty: Because we actually have a brand new antenna.

[00:09:42] Trevor Long: How brand new?

[00:09:44] Marty: About 4 months old.

[00:09:47] Trevor Long: Okay, well the good thing then is you don't have to call a new antenna person – you need to call that person back and say, hey, what's going on here, and they might be able to tweak it if it turns out to be a signal issue. But you may well get a resolution just with that $30 inline amplifier.

[00:10:04] Marty: Yeah, I'll swap the TVs first.

[00:10:07] Trevor Long: And also if it is the TV, do a factory reset on it – basically giving it a kick up the bum. Factory reset and see whether that gives you any improvement.

[00:10:18] Marty: Awesome, mate, thanks for that.

[00:10:19] Trevor Long: A couple of things to try, mate. Let us know.

[00:10:21] Marty: Cheers, brother.

[00:10:22] Trevor Long: Bye, buddy. No worries, thanks for getting in touch.

[00:10:24] Marty: Thank you.

[00:10:25] Trevor Long: No worries. Marty there with an antenna issue, reception issue, wherever you want to describe it – never fun, because right when you want to watch something important, you can't. So worth trying a couple of things there to see what the problem is.

[00:10:42] Voice Over: You're listening to the EFTM podcast. You can text Trev now thanks to Vodafone on 0477 657 657.

[00:10:56] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Lori's on the line. G'day, Lori.

Lori — Transferring emails to a new laptop

[00:11:01] Lori: Hi Trevor, good morning.

[00:11:03] Trevor Long: We've spoken before. What can I do for you today?

[00:11:06] Lori: Yes, I am still having problems with my email being transferred into my new laptop. They have come through, but they haven't gone into the respective folders that I had created on the old laptop. The people out at TPG told me this is what you need to do, so they sent me a link. I copied the link and tried to export whatever instructions were under that page, but nothing has happened.

[00:11:39] Trevor Long: Remind me, what email software are you using?

[00:11:42] Lori: Outlook. Outlook Classic – the old version. Yeah, because that's what I was using previously.

[00:11:49] Trevor Long: I think you're going to struggle to bring them from one place to another and retain the folders, in all honesty. I think your better reliance is on search. Remind me, what's the end of your email address – is it still @TPG, or have you moved to Gmail? Remind me where you're at.

[00:12:06] Lori: No, I do have a Gmail address as well, but that's separate, on a new Outlook. The old TPG one is still on the old Classic, but I'm not sure – and they've now got a new branch based in Brisbane, so I've been put onto that new service from Brisbane. I'm happy with them, but for some reason, they've been trying very faithfully to help me, but I can't get through. And I have decided I will manually do it – it's going to take me a few months to get all my data sorted out.

[00:12:44] Trevor Long: I would ask the question, why – why do you need them in specific folders?

[00:12:49] Lori: Because I'll tell you why – I have my electricity account, my doctor's visits, the bills I get, all those sorts of things that I keep, my super statements. So I kind of file them and then I know where to look for them with time.

[00:13:04] Trevor Long: You know, even with Outlook Classic you can just click on the columns and sort by 'from', and then just scroll down to your superannuation or your bank or whatever the statement is. So I just worry about the amount of time you're going to spend doing this. Have you tried searching much in Outlook? How good is it at finding things just by searching?

[00:13:26] Lori: It's very good – I can still find all my emails. So what I've been doing is going into search, as you said, and typing in 'from, super' – I just put 'superannuation' and a whole list of details comes up from whatever year I've had those documents on my laptop, and I highlight them and transfer them to the superannuation folder.

[00:13:54] Trevor Long: Yeah, but all I'm saying is the same thing works without the moving – when you need that superannuation statement, just search for it.

[00:14:03] Lori: Yeah. Okay.

[00:14:03] Trevor Long: I haven't filed emails in probably a decade because I can just search for it – if I'm looking for an email someone sent me, I search for their name and maybe something related to what's in the email, and I'll find it in due course. So I just worry you're going to spend a lot of time filing things.

[00:14:22] Lori: You're right. It's taking a heck of a lot of time and I don't want to waste my time.

[00:14:26] Trevor Long: All the stress.

[00:14:27] Lori: And the stress. You're right.

[00:14:28] Trevor Long: You know what I mean?

[00:14:29] Lori: Yeah. No, I think I will follow what you're explaining to me, because I'm just trying to work out – I will do only the very, very essential documents that I need to keep.

[00:14:41] Trevor Long: And on those, when you go into the inbox or wherever they all are, again just sort by sender or subject, whichever is the most unique, and then you can just grab, highlight say 20 emails and move them in one go. So just find the essential ones you want to do and do those.

[00:14:59] Lori: Yes, I think that's the best way. Even my nephew said to me it's going to take me probably half the year to complete.

[00:15:06] Trevor Long: Nerdy nephew wins every day.

[00:15:09] Lori: Oh dear, never mind.

[00:15:13] Trevor Long: Well, good luck with it.

[00:15:14] Lori: Thank you, Trevor.

[00:15:15] Trevor Long: No worries at all.

[00:15:16] Lori: Thank you so much.

[00:15:16] Trevor Long: Okay, good on you.

[00:15:17] Lori: Good on you.

[00:15:17] Trevor Long: No worries.

[00:15:17] Lori: Bye for now.

[00:15:18] Trevor Long: Bye. I feel like the nerdy nephew had it sorted – she just needed that validation. It's a lot, and I do worry about Outlook Classic not being great at search and indexing emails, but it's a lot to do, so I think you question why you'd put that much into it. I don't know, you'll probably be okay.

[00:15:42] Voice Over: You're listening to the EFTM podcast. Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

[00:15:55] Trevor Long: Would love to hear from you if you've got a tech question, love to try and help out. If you bought something new and cool and want to share it, I'd love to know about it. If you need some help secret shopping, I will spend your money for you, don't worry. You can get in touch anytime, eftm.com, or send me a text, 0477 657 657. Now I spent the majority of the end of last week and the weekend in Perth as a guest of Optus, and we went to some football, we looked at antennas in stadiums, we really nerded out over the weekend. So I thought I'd recap that with Jane McNamara, the External Communications and Stakeholder Engagement Manager at Optus. It's a long title you've got, Jane.

Jane McNamara (Optus) — Stadium connectivity and Triple Zero tips

[00:16:36] Jane McNamara: Probably too long, Trevor.

[00:16:38] Trevor Long: Well, I missed the EGM part, Executive General Manager. I assume that means something big and exciting.

[00:16:43] Jane McNamara: It is very big and exciting.

[00:16:45] Trevor Long: You're in charge of external comms – let's be honest, it's as simple as that. And thank you for hosting us over the weekend, Stephen and I had a great time. There's a full episode of Two Blokes Talking Optus available now in the podcast feed and up on YouTube. But what I found fascinating was just a general conversation around this being a big empty space – for people who haven't been to Optus Stadium in Perth, think Homebush in Sydney back in 2003 after the Olympics, when it was just a wasteland used for events now and then, and then 60, 80, 100,000 people come to that area for an event. It's a lot to turn on for the stadium and for telcos like you. So there's a bit of preparation that goes into events like that, isn't there?

[00:17:37] Jane McNamara: Huge amount of prep and planning. We're talking months in advance – we need to boost capacity across the stadium and the whole precinct. We undertake extensive pre-event testing and optimisation. It's almost like when you're bringing 60,000 people, if not more, to a concentrated area like Optus Stadium or any stadium, you're essentially creating a satellite city the size that needs the same connectivity as the CBD. So it's huge and extensive because we want to make sure that whether it's a football event or a music concert, you're not worrying about the connectivity – you're having an excellent time and you spend your time on your phone capturing all that great content, saving it for later, but also sharing it in real time while you're there.

[00:18:35] Trevor Long: Yeah, and I think what's fascinating is that you've obviously got data – you can literally graph the usage of the stadium's network for Optus customers, which is a good representation of what goes on when people get there. I found most interesting on the line graph of time a very slow and steady ramp-up to game time, people arriving at their own pace, and conversely at the end of the game it's like 'we're out of here' – no one takes their time leaving a stadium. But while they're in there, the engagement level is very high. I think there was a stat about the engagement level, what people are doing on the network while they're in the stadium.

[00:19:26] Jane McNamara: Yeah, and you're right, we don't just set it up and walk away – we are actually real-time monitoring the network and performance from pre-event, through the event, and then after, so in real time we can make any tweaks we need to make sure the network is operating as it should and everyone's having an excellent experience. It was significant, really interesting to watch the data where there were peaks and troughs. Optus customers used around 4.5 terabytes of mobile data, including 1.2 terabytes of uploads, across that Wednesday night game and the Saturday night game combined. So across the two nights, a significant amount of time and effort went into people using their devices. We also know the data was around 30% higher than a recent AFL match at Optus Stadium despite similar crowd numbers – so really interesting stats, and to your point, that monitoring is really interesting.

[00:20:45] Trevor Long: Yeah. Paul, on our chat during Two Blokes Talking Tech, mentioned the term 'mini broadcasters', and that's essentially what we've all become. I was looking up an article about Optus or stadiums for a story on EFTM and found one from about 10 years ago talking about making stadiums better, with a picture of Stadium Australia – and we've come a long way, it's not the same usage today. Uploads, as you just mentioned – 1.2 terabytes of uploads across two matches – people are taking those moments and sharing them almost instantly as mini broadcasters to their own little community.

[00:21:25] Jane McNamara: Yeah, and interestingly we're not just taking photos or video and uploading to Instagram, which was the most popular social channel across the football weekend and the Wednesday night, but we're making phone calls. I thought this was really interesting – the number of people making phone calls was one of the peak uses of devices across the Wednesday and Saturday night. So not just that typical upload of photos and videos and scrolling Instagram, but we were making phone calls in stadium.

[00:22:09] Trevor Long: 19,000 phone calls across 2 games is to me a staggering amount. And let's be clear, this is Optus customers, so a large percentage but a worthwhile measurement. I can't get my head around it – I can't think of a time I made a phone call during a major sporting event, but maybe that was a unique set of matches, big-time Italian football teams, there might have been people calling home overseas. The timeline of the calls might be interesting too – there might have been a bit of coordinating before and after the game, 'where are you', 'wave if you can see me', that kind of stuff.

[00:22:51] Jane McNamara: Totally, and we were looking at the data and thought the international nature of the crowd might explain that huge number of voice calls – there were more than 2,100 international roaming customers connecting to our network from over 50 countries. So maybe, to your point, it would have been the perfect time to call home, back to Italy, or maybe people were calling friends and family overseas to share the moment, share the magic of football together while they were in stadium.

[00:23:25] Trevor Long: The data shows very clear spikes and troughs – obviously you get a lead-up to kick-off and then a drop-off as people focus on the game, and at halftime there's a spike as people turn on their phone. But there were other moments in the game that stood out as significant, causing these little spikes. It's fascinating to see people getting overwhelmed by something, clicking, taking a photo, and then turning back to their phone to share it.

[00:23:59] Jane McNamara: Absolutely. During Wednesday night's Milan derby, the biggest spike we saw across those two games was the introduction of Luka Modrić around the 70th minute of the game – a huge spike, you just saw flashing lights across Optus Stadium, the fans went wild. That was definitely one of those key moments you could see reflected in a spike in traffic, and people just loved it.

[00:24:28] Trevor Long: And you made a comparison earlier to the AFL – I mean, this indicates that, while you're obviously not talking about it every single week, Optus engineers and teams are constantly looking at this data game to game, match to match, to understand trends and usage to better serve the customer.

[00:24:50] Jane McNamara: Absolutely – we have to champion the customer. That's what this is all about, we spend so much of our free time across the country enjoying sports and concerts, and being able to deliver networks and connectivity that ensure people have an excellent experience is what it's all about. We support more than 250 major events annually, making sure our networks can perform, and it's not just about the pre-planning and delivery on the day, it's the analysis that happens after, so we can keep improving the way our customers have a great time at these events and have the connectivity they need to enjoy the moment and reflect on those memories later.

[00:25:50] Trevor Long: One of the things I found most fascinating talking to Paul Milford was the concept – not suggesting you're not knowledgeable in this area, but I think you might have been as interested as I was – of not wanting to overwhelm the stadium with signal, you want to focus the signal. He used the torch beam as the example, you want to just direct a little bit of signal to every area so everyone gets their share and it all just works. But the other part is monitoring what's happening – if I look at the metrics you supplied, the busiest time shows a peak of nearly 17,000 customers. That number means those engineers can go, okay, if during an Italian football game we could get to 17-odd thousand customers doing something at some time, this moment in time is overwhelming the network, so when you plan the next major event you can go, where did our capacity need to improve, or is the stadium laid out differently, or is the crowd layout different. Those numbers are critical to that planning.

[00:26:59] Jane McNamara: Absolutely, and Paul is definitely your expert on that front. But what I can tell you is across both games we maintained 100% network availability and strong voice and data performance, which shows we know the stadium well, we know our customers and our fans. The other interesting thing that really speaks to getting it right from the connectivity point of view across these stadiums and venues is that during the Saturday match, more than 8,500 Optus customers were connected simultaneously at the busiest point, while on Wednesday's match we peaked at more than 9,300 simultaneous users. So it does show that when you get it right, from beginning to end, 60,000 fans can be connected all together at the one time doing exactly what they want to do with their phones and devices.

[00:28:02] Trevor Long: Really cool experience, and to see how they plan and configure the network was pretty awesome, and to be down on the pitch and have a look was very cool – so thank you for that. We can't talk without thinking about the learnings of the last 12 months or so, and I thought it was important to keep talking about this, because we talked about it on Two Blokes, but for my audience on EFTM – you've obviously learned a lot over the last 12 months, and many more before, even before you joined and before the Triple Zero outage a year ago. We've learned a lot as an industry over this time because it hasn't just been Optus affected by outages, small or large – outages happen all the time, towers are down for maintenance, cables get cut, major incidents occur across all the telcos. It's been fascinating to observe the reporting of those things, and how the focus is on Triple Zero, but the learnings that have come through presentations to Senate estimates and different things around how the Triple Zero network works today, and perhaps how the resilience needs to be worked on – some of those learnings have led you to come up with some basic tips around making sure we all understand. Before we talk about the specific tips, the reason I want to talk about this is because, and I said this to you on the weekend, it's incumbent upon us as individuals to think about other people – we have to have a bit of a community mind and go, well, that elderly neighbour across the road from me probably doesn't know this, maybe next time we cross paths we just have a quick chat about the simple things around 000 that we've learned. We need to think about everyone in this situation.

[00:29:46] Jane McNamara: Absolutely, and I don't think the industry and the community has ever worked so closely together, particularly on things like device safety and education, making sure that no matter whether you're a tech expert like yourself, Trevor, or it's your elderly parents, friends and family, that we're driving not just education, we're driving behaviour change.

[00:30:13] Trevor Long: Yeah, we have to make people think differently, because some of the data has revealed reasons why some people couldn't call, reasons why some devices couldn't call. One of those which I found most fascinating was, well, when I got contacted about Samsung devices not being compliant with our 000 network, and then some Apple phones too. So what we've learned is that software updates matter, don't they, Jane?

[00:30:41] Jane McNamara: 100%. If there's one thing I would love our listeners to take away from our conversation today, it's to keep your software up to date. We often get these little alerts from our mobile phone device manufacturer, and I know some people find them quite annoying – 'oh, it's another thing to do, I'll save it for later' – and we put it on the back burner, but please don't do that. The advice would be keep the software up to date – every time you get that little ping saying there's a software update available, please do it, because there's a reason for it, whether it's fixing bugs or solving an issue they've found, like emergency calling reliability or network compatibility, making sure your phone works as it should.

[00:31:52] Trevor Long: Simple as that. And here's the other one – and again this is logical, but it's just not the way we operate today because everything just stays on. Our laptops are just on, we open them, they're working. Our phones charge at night, we pick them up, they work, the screens are on – but we don't think about turning them off.

[00:32:10] Jane McNamara: We never turn them off.

[00:32:13] Trevor Long: Why would you, Jane?

[00:32:14] Jane McNamara: Why would we? We love our phones with us all the time, 24/7 – actually, when people go to sleep at night, they don't turn their phones off because they use them for an alarm clock. But there has to be times where you restart your phone – not just restart it, actually power it down, switch it off completely, and leave it for 10 minutes. Even if you did that once or twice a week, this would be significant, because restarting your phone ensures updates are installed correctly and makes sure the apps are functioning properly. I know everyone's like 'I don't really want to switch it off', but find those moments where, I don't know, you're at the gym, or watching your favourite TV show, or having family dinner – make that the moment you switch off your phone.

[00:33:11] Trevor Long: Yeah, it's not a bad thing to do generally, not just for the safety of your phone and its ability to connect to Triple Zero. Another big one is phones that are simply not compatible with Australia – hard to understand because everyone just thinks a mobile's a mobile, but every one of our three networks operates on different parts of the spectrum, different frequencies, and they're configured to do certain things certain ways. Phones sold in Australia by major retailers, telcos and the biggest brands have to go through a compliance check. If you buy a phone overseas, or an older phone, it may well not meet those guidelines.

[00:33:53] Jane McNamara: What we've learned, particularly in the last 8 to 12 months, is the huge range of scenarios we have for our phones and devices – we've got Optus, Telstra and Vodafone, so three different mobile networks, then so many different types of phones – Apple, Google, Samsung – and they're all very different, and all of these phones operate in different ways across the networks. That also means that when you're talking about an overseas phone, or maybe a refurbished phone, they're not necessarily going to work on those three mobile networks. So it's critical that when you're thinking 'I need a new phone', don't necessarily go for the overseas phone or the refurbished phone, because it's more than likely they cannot work in an Australian environment across our three different mobile networks. And look, I know phones are expensive and I know how—

[00:34:59] Trevor Long: You don't need to spend $2,000 on a phone though – there are $300 phones that are perfectly adequate and will meet our compliance and connect you correctly to all the networks. We're not trying to tell you you have to spend a lot of money, we're just telling you to avoid the phones that may well cause you problems you won't know about, because Jane, the problem with this whole conversation is you don't know it doesn't work until you need it most.

[00:35:25] Jane McNamara: Yeah, or until it doesn't work, and that's when you find out. And there are moments through the year where you can get a good deal – we talked about this on the weekend – think about end of financial year sales, think about the Cyber sales. Yes, you don't need to spend a fortune on a new phone, but get a phone that you know is approved and will work in Australia.

[00:35:49] Trevor Long: The other two more tips – one of them is to have a Plan B, and I think this is one that most people wouldn't have thought about, which is to think about the other ways you'll communicate, and communicate with people whose numbers you might not have digitally stored.

[00:36:04] Jane McNamara: Yeah, it's interesting when you think about your phone – it is your filing cabinet, your personal directory, your phone directory, your photo album. We often don't think about what if I don't have my phone, what if I lose connectivity, what if the battery dies – how will I be able to find those emergency numbers or the people I need to communicate with. It sounds really simple and a little bit old school, but imagine saving these things offline, via a hard copy, a paper notebook. I actually have one in my handbag for that very reason, because you just don't know – I almost lost my phone in a taxi the other night, I don't know what I would have done, to be honest. Very few numbers I remember.

[00:36:55] Trevor Long: Yeah, I know my wife's number, but I couldn't call my kids without the address list in my phone. We use the fridge, we've got the neighbours' numbers up on the fridge – if anything happens and we're not home, it's just simple things. We're not trying to alarm people, it's just back to basics, because one of those things is if you have these conversations, knowing who's around you, if there's an issue with your phone during an outage, knowing who else is around, who's the closest person with a mobile, what other people are operating on different networks – there's a bunch of reasons those conversations can matter. The big one I've learned during this period, and I've talked about it before, is waiting – we've all learned what 'camp on' is now.

[00:37:39] Trevor Long: We—

[00:37:40] Trevor Long: when your phone is in SOS mode, you can still call 000 because it will camp on to another network – so if you're a Vodafone customer and it says SOS, it'll camp on to Telstra or Optus, if you're a Telstra customer it'll camp on similarly, so it should use any of the networks. But what we've learned is that can take time, and it may vary from device to device, tower to tower, network to network – it could mean that when you call 000, which is a time of emergency, which is why you're calling the emergency number, your phone may not go ring ring, it may pause, it may say 'calling' on it. And the advice is to let it do that for 60 to 90 seconds.

[00:38:19] Jane McNamara: Yes, and that is one of the biggest and hardest lessons we've learned in the past 12 months. Know that there's no pause, you won't get a 'hold the line', you won't hear anything – it doesn't mean the call's not going through, it's searching for one of those other networks to carry the call through to the emergency call person, and that can take some time. The other tip would be, if it doesn't and the call drops out, do call back, try again. But if it feels like it's holding and trying to connect, please hold the line and let it continue to search for that other network to carry your call through.

[00:39:09] Trevor Long: Good advice, good learnings. The industry is working together, as you said, probably better than ever before. It feels like it's incumbent upon not just the industry but regulators and government to be working on this as an education campaign, because it doesn't really matter what happens from here with court cases, fines, ACMA changes – this simple fact doesn't change, this technical ability for your call to find another network and make the call doesn't change. So it feels like something we need the government to put their voice to. Am I on the right track there? Because it feels like people are probably going to think it's just Optus, or it's just Telstra – I feel like it needs to be an all-of-industry, all-of-country campaign.

[00:39:57] Jane McNamara: Absolutely. Optus has a critical role to play and we are absolutely committed, but we have to do it together as an industry, with the mobile network operators, with government, with regulators, and with the mobile phone device manufacturers. This is a one-team effort, and we've got to work together to make sure we're not just providing tips and this sort of advice and education, this is about driving behaviour change – so we know what to do if there's a network outage, a disruption, a power outage or shortage, an emergency weather event, all the things we've talked about today, Trevor, becomes ingrained in us. We know what to do, we know how to prepare, and we know how to be ready, and we've got to do that together.

[00:40:49] Trevor Long: Well, I'll keep talking about it, and that's the best we can do. In the meantime, great advice – thank you so much for having me in Perth, it was a great weekend, we learned a lot, I enjoyed it, and here's to many more, and congrats on the success of the Optus Stadium major event coverage – lots of learnings for the team there as well.

[00:41:09] Jane McNamara: Thanks so much for being part of it, Trevor.

[00:41:11] Voice Over: This is the EFTM podcast.

[00:41:17] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. If you've got a tech question, you know where to find me. Dave's on the line. G'day, Dave.

Dave — Wi-Fi mesh speed drop-off in a two-storey house

[00:41:20] Dave: Hey, mate, how are you?

[00:41:21] Trevor Long: Yeah, really good. What can I do for you?

[00:41:23] Dave: Got, as I said in my message, got 500 meg coming into the house.

[00:41:30] Trevor Long: Yes.

[00:41:30] Dave: And a two-storey house. Now it comes in downstairs – I've got an Eero 7 connected downstairs, then got 3 Eero 6s upstairs connecting, and the bandwidth is dropping quite significantly. So I'm getting about 160 at the other end of the house, about a 20-metre-long house. I'm wondering where the drop's occurring.

[00:41:57] Trevor Long: Have you done a bit of a walkthrough near every single satellite to understand which ones are getting which speed, or is it just downstairs is this and upstairs is that?

[00:42:06] Dave: Directly above the downstairs is getting significantly higher.

[00:42:12] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:42:12] Dave: But then the two as you get away from the main NBN point drop significantly to down around 160-odd.

[00:42:21] Trevor Long: Yeah.

[00:42:22] Dave: How—

[00:42:22] Trevor Long: I haven't used the Eero in great detail – how does the app show those two different styles of Eero, because you've obviously got the first, or the 6, and the 7 generation.

[00:42:34] Dave: Yeah, they have no hassle at all picking them up, they're quite happy to operate and the bandwidth isn't causing issues, but I'm just going, as you regularly say, if you're getting 500 in at point A, you should get it right the way through. Now, one of my problems is the first point I've got connected with a Cat5e to the first upstairs point, gets quite significant – but the actual satellite is in a sort of hidden cupboard. Should it be more out in the open, and could that be blocking?

[00:43:14] Trevor Long: In theory that's one of the many things that could be doing it. So the first thing I would do – have you got family?

[00:43:21] Dave: Yep.

[00:43:21] Trevor Long: Kick them out for a day, send them somewhere, right?

[00:43:24] Dave: Yeah.

[00:43:24] Trevor Long: And you basically want to turn everything in the house off except your Wi-Fi network – anything that could be connected to the network, turn it off, so it's just you, your phone and the Eeros. So first and foremost we get a bit of a baseline – okay, this is what the network is, because it rules out any device interference. If you go upstairs and you're getting 300, 400 from those slower ones, then you know it's something on your network causing the problem. But if you go up there and it's still as bad, then you know it's the actual network. And then you could probably look at the individual satellites and go, okay, turn them off in independent ways – turn one off, see the effect on the network, turn a different one off, get a sense of the effect of each individual satellite. Why I said send the family for a day, this would literally take half a day – turning everything off is an hour there, doing the speed test another half an hour, and if you're to the point of turning off the satellites, when you turn one off you can't just turn it back on and do a speed test, you've got to wait 10 minutes for it to fully connect and configure the network. So you want to be as technically strategic as possible, because it may well be as simple as that Ethernet connection providing the best to that first satellite, and it's actually the backhaul that's the problem between all the satellites. I can't remember, is the Eero 6 a tri-band network – I think it is from memory, which means it should have its own dedicated backhaul going on. So part of your little independent study on the day is to pull that Eero out of the cupboard and see whether that makes a difference. Wi-Fi doesn't need to be line of sight, but there are certainly interferences that can occur – brick walls, concrete walls, concrete floors. But the other thing is if you've got that Ethernet connectivity, it may well be better to swap it all around a little bit and send the NBN upstairs, so your primary router is actually upstairs and everything else is secondary – because weirdly, Wi-Fi falls better than it goes up. So if it was ever possible, you'd want your NBN coming in essentially in the roof and having Wi-Fi on the ceilings – that's why in offices they're on the ceiling, it falls better than it goes up. So that's another little tweak you could make to potentially find out what it is.

[00:46:06] Dave: So you'd potentially move the 7 upstairs.

[00:46:08] Trevor Long: Correct.

[00:46:10] Dave: And move one of the 6s downstairs.

[00:46:11] Trevor Long: Correct. And see whether that gives you anything better, because my worry about the 6s and 7s working together is the backhaul – I wonder whether they're being confused by the available backhaul, and whether the backhaul is different between the 6s and 7s. That may be the conflict and the concern. As you said, it's not a game-changing, world-ending problem – first world problem to have 150 meg speeds, right?

[00:46:37] Dave: But exactly.

[00:46:38] Trevor Long: But it's about efficiency and future-proofing, right? So those little things you could do, there's a bunch of little things you could do that would totally help – if I was doing those things at home, I'd do it on a day when my wife had the kids somewhere, because I don't want the drama of 'why is it not working yet'. You just want the peace of mind.

[00:46:58] Dave: I'd have it.

[00:46:59] Trevor Long: To just get on with it, right? So have a crack at that and see whether you can isolate a little bit easier what the problem might be.

[00:47:07] Dave: Awesome, appreciate your help.

[00:47:08] Trevor Long: No worries, buddy, good luck.

[00:47:09] Dave: I'll let you know how we go.

[00:47:10] Trevor Long: Thanks, mate, I'd appreciate it, that'd be good to know.

[00:47:12] Dave: Thanks.

[00:47:12] Trevor Long: Thanks, cheers – no worries. Yeah, it's that whole thing I talk about a lot, trial and error, trying to fundamentally find where the issue lies. It's about sensibility around something's causing the problem, and it may well be inherently the network – that's why you start with turning everything off and seeing whether inherently the network is at fault for the speed issues. But trial and error will get you there.

[00:47:49] Voice Over: 657 657, that's the text line, thanks to Vodafone. Get in touch and Ask Trev today.

[00:48:05] Trevor Long: Great to have your company. Thanks, Deeksy. So I found the date – sorry if you were listening at the start, I assume you were. It's been 6,130 days since I started Your Tech Life. It was the 29th of October 2009, Thursday night, so it's been 16 years, 9 months and 13 days. Wow, that's a lot of time – that's crazy. Feel old now? If you were there in the early days, I don't have early Your Tech Life episodes, I think – I feel like I might have lost those along the way. Anyway, I'll dig through the Dropbox and see what I can find. Thank you for listening, folks – let's do it all again next week. We'll talk to Michele Butti from Amazon, the Vice President of Alexa International at Amazon, next week on the show, plus your calls. I look forward to your company then – let's do it, folks.

[00:49:12] Voice Over: This is the EFTM podcast.