Residents of a coastal community four hours north of Perth say they have reached "boiling point" after almost a week without Telstra mobile phone reception. 

Mobile outages were first reported in Dongara and Port Denison last Friday, with about 3,000 residents affected. 

A Telstra spokesperson said the outage was because of a failure with power equipment located within the base station. 

They said the team had been working since the weekend to bring everything back online. 

But Irwin Shire President Mark Leonard, who had to sit on a hill about 30 minutes out of town to call the ABC, said there hadn't been any proactive communication from Telstra to the council about the outage. 

"We feel like we've been left in the dark a bit, and whether [a solution] is happening or not it's hard to tell," he said.

Businesses lose sales

Electronics and supply business owner Ian Smith said the outages forced him to turn away fuel customers because the pumps were automatic and connected to eftpos machines. 

"We usually do between $10,000 and $17,000 a week just on fuel which is only a small profit but we also have staff on," Mr Smith said. 

"So at the start we were hesitant what to do because we regularly have outages.

Safety concerns

Springfield resident Yvonne Jenkins is listed as a palliative care patient, so has wi-fi calling at her home. 

But the extended outage means she can't contact anyone who doesn't have access to the system. 

"I get priority services over many different things because of my health," she said.

"But of course the issue is not being able to contact anyone else, as they don't have access to the system."

Dongara resident Colleen Austin said her elderly mother had an alarm that would usually detect and alert their family if she had a fall. 

The LiveLife alarm uses the Telstra mobile network, but Ms Austin said it hadn't had signal for the duration of the outage.

She was concerned for the safety of elderly people in town who might not have realised that the alarm wasn't connected.

'Unacceptable situation'

State Opposition leader Shane Love, who is also the region's local MP, said the length of and response to the outages was unacceptable.

"The lack of ability to respond quickly to what is a devastatingly widespread outage is obviously a huge concern," Mr Love said.

With banking and other services moving solely online, Mr Love said mobile coverage must now be viewed as an essential service.

"I will be taking this forward as an example of what is an unacceptable situation where people are left in the dark … in terms of their mobile coverage, without there being a satisfactory response."

Midwest towns and surrounding areas 50 to 100km inland of Dongara were also impacted by lengthy mobile service outages earlier this week.

A Telstra spokesperson said a separate transmission issue had been affecting mobile services in and around Mingenew, but that had been resolved.

They said triple zero calls, landline and NBN internet were not impacted and crews had been onsite since Tuesday working to repair or replace equipment.