Telstra CAN Radio shutdown raises remote backup power fears

Telstra will shut down its CAN Radio phone system and ADSL service by November 2027, leaving some remote customers worried about what happens when mains power fails. The carrier says the more than 40-year-old platform has become unreliable and difficult to repair. For households that treat a landline as emergency infrastructure, the replacement raises a blunt issue: the new equipment needs power at the premises.

Customers in Mount Coolon, about 250 kilometres west of Mackay, told ABC News the old service had stayed dependable in country where distance and electricity supply both matter. The migration path Telstra outlines uses satellite equipment that needs a 230-240V supply at the home. Telstra says that supply is the customer’s responsibility, a small line on a support page that becomes much larger during a storm or extended outage.

CAN Radio was never going to run forever. Telstra says the service has reached the end of the road after more than four decades, and few customers would expect a legacy network to avoid replacement indefinitely. The practical test is narrower: whether the new service can match the old one at the moment people most need a working phone.

In its Exchange explainer, Telstra said CAN Radio could no longer be properly supported because specialised parts and technical expertise were getting harder to find. Marty McGrath, the carrier’s fixed connectivity executive, put the company’s position to the ABC this way:

“[CAN is] increasingly unreliable, hard to repair, and frankly, not what we think customers can rely on for their connectivity.”

Source: Marty McGrath, ABC News

Telstra’s support page is direct about what the replacement requires. It says the new equipment needs a 230-240V supply, then tells customers:

“The supply of power is your responsibility.”

Source: Telstra support page

For remote customers, that sentence carries more weight than a standard installation note. It moves part of the continuity problem from the carrier’s network to each customer’s own power plan, including batteries or generators if they want the service to stay live. ABC reported that Mount Coolon resident Kate Ashton viewed the landline as a safety service, not a convenience for routine calls. She told the broadcaster:

“If we didn’t have a reliable landline, we wouldn’t have her. It’s as simple as that.”

Source: Kate Ashton, ABC News

Telstra says customers moving off CAN Radio and ADSL may receive a temporary number for up to three business days while their existing landline number moves to the new service. That answers part of the changeover process. It does not answer the post-installation concern: how much backup power remote households will need to keep the service alive through a longer outage, and who helps them make that call.

The dispute sits inside a familiar Australian telco trade-off. Telstra is trying to retire ageing regional infrastructure before it fails more often. Its CAN Radio customers want proof that a newer service will still work when power, distance and weather are all against them.