You'll now need to travel further than William Creek to escape your mobile phone.
It may be just a speck on the map in outback South Australia but last week the tiny town of William Creek switched on their Optus 3G mobile phone service connecting travellers to the rest of the world.
Now travellers with Optus mobile phones will be able to make calls, send emails & text messages and connect to the internet within about a 3km radius of the centre of town.
Subscribers to other networks will be able to make emergency calls by dialling 000 or 112
William Creek Hotel owner, Trevor Wright, has spent the last couple of years working with Optus to get the service installed and it will no doubt result in travellers spending more time in the town as they can connect with their friends and family, Facebook, email etc.
Telstra still has a far wider reach in regional and remote Australia but this move by Optus is part of their expansion into more remote areas and can only be a positive thing for road trippers like us.
Optus has had a phone service further up the track in Oodnadatta for 18 months and is planning expansion into other outback towns.
If you're planning an outback road trip and you're not currently an Optus customer it might be worth buying a pre-paid Optus sim card you can put in your phone for towns like William Creek and Oodnadatta that only have Optus coverage.
[…] It may be just a speck on the map in outback South Australia but last week the tiny town of William Creek switched on their Optus 3G mobile phone service connecting travellers to the rest of the world. Now travellers with Optus mobile phones will be able … ( read original story …) […]
It'd be beneficial if people who traveled to William creek within the last three months or do come back and tell us how it went for them.