LARGE parts of the Landsborough Highway between Tambo and Blackall; Winton and Cloncurry and Augathella and Tambo are now enjoying improved mobile coverage thanks to three new mobile base stations. A new mobile base station at McKinlay is now also online.
To date, Telstra has rolled out 26 new mobile base stations specifically designed to cover regional and rural road corridors in Queensland under the Federal Government’s Mobile Black Spot Program (MBSP).
Telstra area general manager Darren Clark said the delivery of the technology was a significant moment for communities who had called for more road coverage.
“A number of the base stations we are building or upgrading as part of the Mobile Black Spot Program are focused on bringing Telstra’s 3G and state of the art 4GX network to the roads and highways that connect rural communities,” Mr Clark said.
“The introduction of the 4GX network will mean increased capacity for the local mobile network, giving locals improved and more consistent data speeds.
“We recently switched on our 300th base station under the MBSP, we have now brought mobile coverage to more than 130,000 square kilometres across the country with many more base stations to go.”
Mr Clark said Telstra was proud to be part of an initiative which extended the latest technologies across regional and rural communities, along major regional transport routes, and in locations prone to natural disasters.
Telstra has been selected to build a total of 577 new mobile base stations under round 1 and 2 of the Mobile Black Spot Program, more than double all of our competitors combined.
“This includes an investment of more than $229 million of our own capital, significantly contributing to the $486m worth of co-investment between Telstra, the Federal and State Governments as well as numerous local councils,” Mr Clark said.
“In addition to 577 new mobile base stations, Telstra is continuing to install up to 250 small cells to deliver high speed 4G mobile data services in some small country towns where suitable Telstra infrastructure is available.
“On average, over the past 10 years about 15 per cent of Telstra’s mobile network capital expenditure was made in remote and very remote parts of Australia, where about 2pc of the nation’s population lives.”