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ABC Central West NSW discussing the Mobile Black Spot Programme
Host: Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications says the Government has held fifty meetings around Australia and has heard a similar message: focus on flood and fire prone areas, improve reception on the highways in case of accidents, and flat areas promise the best returns on investment but there are other priorities as well.
Paul Fletcher MP: Education, so a lot of people have talked to me about their concerns about their children being able to get online and then there’s all the economic factors and particularly obviously in agriculture as agriculture is increasingly such high tech sector: soil moisture monitoring, remotely opening and closing gates, water flowing into cattle drinking troughs, or the diagnostics on farm equipment on harvesters or tractors but all of that depends on connectivity.
Host:
The Federal Government will release some guidelines soon on how the tenders will be run and how decisions will be made on where to build these new base stations.
Paul Fletcher MP:
Those guidelines will cover things like number of premises that would get covered that are in area that doesn’t have coverage now, the number of kilometres of road that will get coverage that doesn’t have coverage now and also factors like value for money, it may be that a council is in a position to provide access to land on a concessional or indeed zero-rental basis. Another factor that’s very important is the availability of power, so if a council or local community can identify for example land that already has power because it might be for example a television broadcasting retransmission tower or a tower used by emergency services then that’s very important to know.
Host:
Farmers want to know when the mobile phone reception and internet reception will be improved, Paul Fletcher explained what the timeframe will be.
Paul Fletcher MP:
The second half of this year we expect to commence a competitive selection process with the mobile operators Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, and potentially a number of other specialist telecommunications infrastructure companies as well. Then the plan is to be in a position in the first half of next year of 2015 to announce the location around the country where funding will be provided for an addition base station then the intention is that the first base stations that will be funded under the program will start to rollout in the second half of 2015, that rollout will then continue over about the next three years.
Host:
Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Federal Minister to Communications ending that report.
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