According to the Communications, Electrical Plumbing Union (CEPU) some Dubbo residents have had to wait for more than a month to get any faults fixed.

They claim as many as 158 people in Dubbo alone have been waiting for more than 30 days and they argue the situation isn't going to get any better.

The union says years of thinning the ranks of technicians and centralising is coming back to hurt Telstra but it is also having an affect on the customer.

Telstra have put their hand up and admitted that customers are waiting, because the demand for workers is higher than normal. However they claim the 158 faults the union mentions is across the Dubbo tech service delivery area, which takes in Dubbo, Coonabarabran, Coonamble, Cobar, Nyngan, Wellington and Broken Hill.

The CEPU claims technicians are being asked to get through an unrealistic number of jobs a day but are forbidden from working overtime or weekends. As a result, they claim the quality of repair jobs has suffered, which results in more callouts to fix reoccurrences of problems.

It might be a sign of the times but 20 years ago, Telstra, and prior to that Telecom, vehicles were a common sight in every town and city across the country. When was the last time you saw a Telstra truck?

Let's hope Telstra can catch up on the backlog of faults and get the repairs done well enough they won't require maintenance for a long time to come.