Paul Fletcher MP speaks on ABC South East NSW Mornings about Mobile Black Spots

HOST 1: Federal MP, Paul Fletcher, Secretary to Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull is in our patch this week. Tomorrow in fact, he will be meeting with local emergency service groups and local businesses also be talking about the federal government's $100 million program which will be something of a competitive selection process for local governments. I’m very pleased to say that Paul Fletcher is on the line for a bit of a chat. Paul, thanks so much for your time.

Paul Fletcher: Good Morning Sophie, pleased to be with you. 

HOST 1: Now how important is it to do these visits to regional areas here and engage with the communities here?

Paul:  Well, it’s extremely important, it’s very easy to sit in Canberra and make policies in relation to communities in regard to communications and other areas, not really understanding the issues that people are facing directly with their communications needs. So Peter Hendy is the Member for Eden-Monaro an advocate for the needs of his community and many communities forming the electorate of Eden-monaro and tomorrow he is arranged a for me to join him in Bega, and we will be having a discussion amongst local community leaders, council, emergency services, some local businesses and some so on about communications needs, and we’ll be talking about the Abbott Government’s approach to the National Broadband Network, getting that rolled out but also our program to spend 100 million dollars on improved mobile coverage around the country. This is policy we took to the 2013 election and we are as you said in your introduction about to kick off a competitive selection process, so I’ll be talking to those present about that and trying to get a better understanding of the communications challenges in the south east.

HOST 1: Well I’m keen to talk about that but let’s touch on those challenges in the south east because I would imagine from your perspective that the Eden-Monaro electorate is reasonably challenging. We’ve got mountains ranges, we’ve got coastal environments, we’ve got a lot of hills in between and a lot of black spots.

Paul: look that’s obviously right. Obviously it’s a very big electorate, it covers a lot of south east New South Wales, secondly it’s quite a diverse electorate with some reasonably built areas and a lot of small communities and then as you rightly say it’s got a lot of hills. Hills create a challenge for mobile communications and wireless communications not an insurmountable challenge but a challenge and ofcourse one of the other characteristics of Eden-monaro and all of the towns along the South Coast of New South Wales is that many of them are holiday towns because therefore the population jumps very sharply at Christmas time and other peak times of the year.

HOST 1: Well let’s look at the plan, the $100 million blackspots program. What are you hoping to achieve with that and why make it a competitive process? Why not just make it open to everybody?

Paul: Well, the way that this program is working is we started by calling for nominations from people around Australia as to the locations they believe did not have adequate mobile coverage. This is in regional, rural and remote Australia. We’ve come up with around 6000 nominations, we expect to be able to fund between 250 and 300 of these stations around the country so the intention now is to have a competitive selection process under which Telstra, Optus and Vodafone the 3 mobile network operators will be advised to put forward the list of locations drawn from that 6000 where they would propose to build those stations and they will be asked to nominate funding they would need out of the funds that are subsidised each base station and the amount of their own money that they’re going to put in and  the intention with making this a competitive selection process is to have a competitive two ways, first of all between sites so that we make sure that the sites that get funded are the ones that have maximum community benefit but also competitive between the three operators so that we can make sure on behalf of tax payers that we’re getting the best value for money in terms of the amount of subsidies that we need to put in to get the additional base stations we’re looking for.

HOST 1: Because Paul Fletcher as you are no doubt aware and that’s why you’re meeting with emergency service groups and local businesses today as well, for regional areas it isn’t just about managing a high density population when it comes to mobile coverage it’s also often a safety issue and an emergency issue.

Paul: Look that’s absolutely right, I’ve held quite a number of community meetings around the country in relation to this program and rural communications more broadly, you’re absolutely right the first issue that people raise is safety, road accidents, farmer’s accidents, responses to national disasters (bushfires, floods and so on) so the importance for communication, calling for help, passing on information about the direction a bushfire is travelling or any of these kinds issues. The next issue people raise is economic participation and the importance of mobile communications. The tourism sector is a classic example of course there’s a lot of tourism businesses up and down the south coast of New South Wales. The importance of having mobile coverage is a factor whether people stop overnight at your caravan park or motel but also mobile coverage in agriculture so lots of other economic activities it really is important and the other thing people mention is mobile and broadband generally for education. It’s so important that the kids when they’re doing their homework and of course adults as well doing their distance education have that internet access.  It’s such a central part of modern education.

HOST 1: And looking at that finally, Paul Fletcher on the program we regularly have calls from people who are still on satellite technology and it is quite common in this region for these blackspot areas to be covered by satellites. Is there development happening in that area to make sure that those satellites services will be improved for those areas which literally cannot access any type of technology?

Paul: Oh absolutely. The way forward on satellites is going to see some pretty significant changes what’s called the long term satellite service is due to commence in the first quarter of 2016 are two brand new satellites being built now for NBN co. The first of them due to launch in second half of 2015 and once what is called in-orbit testing is completed that will be ready to come into service and once the long term satellite service is in operation that will deliver a speech of 25 megabytes per second down peak speed and 5 megabytes per second peak speed up. That’s a step change from the kind of speeds people are getting satellites today. It’s better than what most people are getting on DSL in the cities today and indeed one of the things I’ll be doing with Peter Hendy the member for Eden-Monaro is that at the South East tomorrow, we’ll be visiting the Wolumla satellite ground station. So that the National Broadband Network Company, NBN Company is in the course of building which now they have finished building, 10 satellite ground stations around the country. There are an integral part of the end to end satellite systems, as it happens to be, one of them is located in the South East, they’re spread all around the country, and they need to be for operational reasons. So we’ll be having a look at that just checking progress on that and this is all part of getting ready for the long-term satellite service to commence targeting first quarter of 2016.

HOST 1: And how is having that satellite grounds station in Wolumla a big win for the south east region? Will that really have a big difference for us?

Paul: It’s clearly important because what it does is, it is the return part so the signal goes from the individual home or premises up to the satellite then it comes down to a particular location. So yes it is important to have these facilities spread around Australia and particular locals that they are in. Obviously there’s been some expenditure on the construction of that and that’ll be an ongoing operational function there.

HOST 1: Paul Fletcher, we do appreciate your time today. It’s been fascinating to chat to you just about some of these big picture issues for communications in the South East region and we look forward to having you in the area tomorrow.

Paul: No worries Sophie. Nice to have a chat.

Host 1:  Paul Fletcher there. Parliamentary secretary to the minister for communications and as he mentioned he’ll be joining Peter Hendy member for Eden-Monaro tomorrow as part of that tour.

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