ABC Bush Telegraph: Mobile Black Spot Programme

Host: Well let’s start by trying to find out if your mobile black spot is likely to be fixed next year. The Federal Government is spending 100 million dollars, and the aim is to improve mobile reception around Australia; If you were listening a couple of months back you would’ve heard that there is a shortlist of some 6000 locations that have been nominated as in need of better or some coverage, and now essentially, we’re waiting on the mobile phone carriers to say where they want to build the new towers with the help of a government subsidy. Paul Fletcher is Parliamentary Secretary to the Communications Minister; thanks for coming in again, appreciate it.

PF: Pleasure.

Host: How much closer are rural Australians to knowing if they’re going to get mobile service or not?

PF: Well what we are announcing today is the commencement of the formal competitive selection process; that’ll be the opportunity now for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and also potentially some specialist infrastructure companies to develop proposals, as to where they would build base stations around the county with the benefit of this government subsidy. They are required to lodge their proposals by March 16th , and then the government will assess them against all the criteria set out in the guidelines, and we aim to be in a position to announce the base stations that get funding by 30 June next year.

Host: So you are close to getting a list of locations from the carriers are you?

PF: Well that is the next step; so what they are required to do under the Competitive Selection Process; they start as you rightly said; with the 6000 or so locations around the country that have been nominated by Australians; and then we asked them to come up with their list of where they would build their new or improved base stations. They need to tell us how much it’s going to cost, how much they’re going to put in, how much they want out of the fund, how many new premises would get coverage, how many square kilometres would get coverage here, how many kilometres of road, of major transport routes are going to get coverage. So that’ll all get fed into the government. We will then go through and choose the ones that will get the tick from that list, so we could end up with a mix from different operators depending on what they end up proposing, so the objective here is to make the process be competitive as between the three mobile network operators so that we get best value for taxpayers’ money, and drive this money as far as we can and getting as many base stations as we can for the money, but secondly competitive as between locations, so that we can choose the locations that give the best benefit overall.

Host: So what’s new today is you’ve released the criteria of which ones you’ll assess and get the nod and which don’t?

PF: Yes what’s new is first of all we’ve released the formal guidelines after developing them extensively over the year and a lot of back and forth between the mobile network operators and other interested stakeholders, such as state governments, but then the second thing that’s new is that the clock’s now ticking for the operators to develop their proposals and come forward by March the 16th.

Host: When we spoke recently, you were quite clear a key component of this will be the number of residencies that are covered by a new tower and also the number of kilometres of road that’s covered. Is there anything new in addition to that that will be used to assess the benefit or the likelihood of a project going ahead; a tower being built?

PF: Well there’s a range of factors that are set out, I think that those are the major ones. One of the other ones that’s relevant is that we’ve said is if a federal member of parliament has nominated a location; they can nominate up to three locations, each one of them will get a certain amount of points in the process. We’ve done that because-

Host: Do these have to be rural locations?

PF: Rural and regional yes that’s right. So why we’ve done that is because people very often complain to their local member of parliament if their telecommunications network isn’t up to scratch, so local MPs have a good repository of knowledge about what are the priority areas; I hasten to add that that right to nominate is available to any one of the relevant electorates, doesn’t matter their Liberal, Labor, National, Independent etcetera, but it’s just about picking up that community knowledge that a local MP will often have. Look the other factor is value for money so that the numbers of square kilometres of coverage, or the numbers of premises then get weighed up against what’s the dollars going into the base station. Now we’re working on a figure on average across the country of six hundred thousand dollars for a new base station, but it does vary; in some areas it’ll be less than that; for example if it happens to be the case that there is an existing tower, for example a government tower of a television broadcasting tower that an operator can use. On the other hand, a more remote site in the remote parts of Queensland or the Northern Territory or WA for example, could easily be a million or two million dollars, so the more remote they are the more expensive that they are.

Host: But you are still working on an overall number of 250-300 towers?

PF: Yes that’s right, that continues to be our estimate based upon previous programs, typically a bit smaller in scale, but previous programs.

Host: And how many of these black spots do you think will be addressed; of the 6000 nominated, how many will be fixed with 250-300 towers?

PF: Well I guess we’ll only ultimately know the answer to the question at the end of the process, but a couple of points on that, firstly, we asked people to nominate the 6000, we did not do any testing that they are in fact areas without coverage, now in many cases they certainly are but there will be some in there that actually do have coverage on the standard measurements. The other factor of course is that quite a few of these black spots, or these nominated locations are quite close to each other, so one base station could very well serve multiple locations. A relevant fact there actually is that the distance you can go is affected by a number of factors including the radio frequency spectrum, so lower frequencies give you longer distance. Now both Telstra and Optus are about to introduce 700 megahertz spectrum, they purchased that at auction, they spent a lot of money on it.

Host: Is that low?

PF: That is low, yes. So as a reference point, the traditional GSM which has been around since the mid-90s is a 900 megahertz, quite a lot of other services are 1800 megahertz, so 700 megahertz is low, so the relevance of that is is that they’ve got some new tools to deploy as it were which should help them get a bit more distance from existing locations and new locations they are planning compared to what would’ve been possible previously.

Host: So does that mean that it’s going to be harder for Vodafone to win any of the tender process because they’ve got the higher spectrum, the less distance, less punch in their coverage; are they up against it?

PF: Well what I’d say is we’ve tried to set this up so that it’s a competitive process and each of them will put their best foot forward referable to their own strategies and their own strengths, so perhaps I’ll leave it to each of the operators to talk about that if they want to, and the first thing they’ll be doing their detailed homework, which I know they are all doing, perhaps one other point to make there though is to talk briefly about something called specialist network infrastructure providers. So these are companies like Crown Castle and Broadcast Australia which own and operate towers for the mobile companies today, either the mobile companies or other companies in the communications sector. Now we’ve invited them to come forward as well, and it may well be that they’ve got an appetite for example to build towers in places that the other companies don’t. We want to find all of that out. The whole purpose of the competitive process is ‘give us your best ideas, and we’ll work out what gets us the most done with this amount of government money’.

Host: Will the public have access to the list of locations that the companies are putting forward; the carriers are putting forward- the people want to know if they’re on the list or not, will they get the chance to see that?

PF:  Well what they will certainly see is the list that will ultimately emerge from the government process, so we will make a decision based upon what the carriers have put forward, it’ll be against the criteria that are put forward; it’ll be against what’s in the guidelines

Host: But if I’m at Marree and I want to know if I’ve got any chance of mobile phone coverage reception, I won’t find out if I’m not on any of the carriers’ list?

PF: That’s right, so the timing of the announcement process will be announced when there’s a decision on which locations are being funded. That being said, it is certainly open to community leaders and concerned citizens to be engaging with the mobile operators to say, for example, look, I’m in a location that’s on the list of 6000, and here are all the good reasons I reckon you should be including this in your bid, and I expect there will be a fair bit of dialogue like that going on.

Host: Okay but in the New Year, at the start of next year, people will have a good idea if they are going to get a new tower or mobile reception?

PF:  The aim is that we will be in a position to announce it by 30 June next year.

Host: Okay so people will know then. One quick question without notice, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications, got a view on the ABC cuts; this programme going?

PF: As the communications Malcom Turnbull has made clear, number one, we do need to secure some efficiencies from the ABC and SBS, from every other part of government, and number two what Minister Turnbull has put a lot of work into is the Lewis review commissioned earlier this year from Peter Lewis, former chief financial officer at the Seven network saying ‘well look, what would they, in a commercial broadcaster, what would you do if you looked at the businesses of the ABC and SBS’ and said ‘well how could we find efficiencies in a way that doesn’t cause cuts to frontline services?’

Host: And would cutting this program represent a cut to a front line service?

PF: Well I think there what I would say is operational decisions on which programs get funded and which don’t are for ABC Board and Management and it is important that we preserve that appropriate distinction, not least for editorial independence; you don’t want politicians making programming decisions.

Host: Okay thanks very much for coming in and taking those questions without notice I really appreciate it. Paul Fletcher, who is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Communications Minister, you are listening to Bush Telegraph, you are on RN and Radio Australia    

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