Like many others in Strachur, we continue to struggle with poor access to telephone lines. This can cause problems for patients trying to contact the practice.
We've always had issues with intermittent outages to our telephone lines and broadband. However, the problem became worse after the storm in the spring of 2025.
We have three incoming telephone lines to our internal exchange in the practice. However, we often find that people dialling into the practice can't connect. Sometimes people connect but we can't hear them. Sometimes we can't get an outside line. Other times we get an outside line but the person we dial can't hear us or we can't hear them.
The issue is due to poor telecoms infrastructure in the Strachur area and is something that is beyond the control of the practice.
We've been working for around six months with our current telecom provider, BT, and a new telecom provider to try to find solutions but nothing they do seems to work. We have tried switching to VOIP from copper cables but we can't get any broadband signal on the ports that we've had installed in the practice. Our installer works nationally and says he's never seen this before in his career. We're also lucky as one of our receptionists used to be a local telecom engineer and understands the system well.
It's very frustrating. We are looking now at installing a cellular system which uses the mobile signal, but as patients will be aware the mobile signals are also unreliable in our area. Another alternative is to use an orbital system such as Starlink, and I know at least one other business in the area is doing this. However, there are concerns about using this for voice calls for a medical practice.
We will continue to try to improve the quality of the system, although the root problem - poor infrastructure - is beyond our control.