Having great mobile phone coverage in the city is one thing, but as you get deeper and deeper into this great land of ours, you notice that bars of signal become shorter and shorter. The Federal Government is now working to fix that.
Making good on an election promise, the Federal Government is opening up the bidding process for Telstra, Optus and Vodafone to access $100 million in funding to build new phone towers at coverage blackspots in rural and regional Australia.
The Government is unlocking the funding, while also asking telco bidders to kick in their own cash as well.
Paul Fletcher MP is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications (he also used to work for Optus), and he’s hoping that telcos kick in an additional $100 million into the process, bringing the total funding up to $200 million for the project.
Over 6000 locations have been identified in the Black Spot Programme so far. The government hopes to have the first towers up and providing coverage this time next year.
It’s hoped that 300 towers will go up as a result of the programme.
Read more here.
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