Federal Member for Hume Angus Taylor has welcomed news of a competitive selection process to locate new mobile phone towers in Hume. Mr Taylor said the Coalition Government had announced the next step in a $100 million programme to improve mobile phone coverage across regional and remote Australia.

“This cannot happen fast enough for parts of my electorate. Just last week we were reminded of the threat to lives and property with a scrub fire in the Reid’s Flat area near Cowra and residents unable to call neighbours. Landlines were down because of an electrical storm and there is no mobile phone coverage in the area. I am raising these events with the office of the Minister for Communications so the Minister is again made aware of the needs of landowners in Hume.

“The competitive selection process now underway will see mobile network operators and infrastructure providers bid for funding to provide new or improved mobile coverage. Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and other bidding parties must lodge their proposals by March 2015.

“Bidders will need to set out the locations where they intend to build new or upgraded base stations.

“For each location, and I am hoping for a fair number in Hume, the bidder will need to specify the funding it seeks from the government; the amount it is putting in; and funding from any other sources. It will also need to give information about the coverage benefits the base station will offer – for example, the area in square kilometres to get new coverage from the base station.

“The process is designed to maximise competition in two ways – between locations and between bidders – to get as many new base stations as possible for the money.

“The Government is aiming to announce the locations of the base stations to be funded during the first half of 2015 – and we expect the first base stations under the programme will begin to roll out in the second half of 2015.”

Mr Taylor said the programme was expected to fund between 250 and 300 new mobile phone base stations around Australia.