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School holiday travellers on one of Queensland's top tourism islands are being warned their mobiles might fail as frustrations grow over frequent phone and internet outages.
Tropical Magnetic Island, less than 15 kilometres off the coast of Townsville, boasts more than 290,000 visitors per year.
The most recent outage began last week, just before the school holidays started, and left many residents without mobile or landline services.
A Telstra spokesperson said a hardware issue and damage to the cable caused the landline and 4G outages.
They said the company was working to resolve the issue within 24 hours.
Magnetic Island has over 290,000 visitors per year. (ABC North Qld: Hannah Kotaidis)
Bad phone and internet service 'nothing new'
Businesses are concerned the lack of connectivity could affect their reputation, with tourism operators unable to answer calls or take bookings.
Janie Brooker and her husband Dale have started a Facebook group, in a bid to encourage people to complain to the telecommunications ombudsman to resolve the situation.
Ms Brooker said the recent outage was nothing new.
"I do know of a lot of business who say they can't run their EFTPOS, they're not getting phone calls," she said.
"If they're not getting phone calls, they're not getting bookings.
"We constantly get customers coming up and they can't access their phone apps for their licenses, credit cards, they can't transfer money."
She said their business relied on a more expensive satellite service for phone reception.
Janie and Dale Brooker fork out hundreds of dollars per month to pay for internet. (Supplied: Janie Brooker)
Big tourism island
The island supports 25 per cent of North Queensland's tourism jobs.
More than 200 businesses operate on the island, including accommodation, restaurants and transport operators.
Ms Brooker said more needed to be done.
"I'd like to see the service repaired and I'd like people to receive some proper compensation for the extra money they've had to pay out," she said.
Townsville MP Scott Stewart also called for urgent intervention.
He accused the federal government of continuing to disregard the long-standing problem.
"To not have internet in this day and age is absolutely appalling," Mr Stewart said.
"This is about school holidays, we get an influx of families and kids coming into one of the greatest places, I think, in Queensland is Magnetic Island."
A spokesperson for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said they had contacted Telstra to find out more about the outage.
The federal minister has urged anyone unsatisfied with the service to contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
"Unfortunately no telecommunications network is 100 per cent resilient, unplanned faults and service outages can occur from time to time," a spokesperson said.
"However, each mobile network operator should make best efforts to resolve any service disruption for customers as soon as possible when they do occur."