Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Minister for Rural Health) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition government has delivered $100 million to dramatically improve our mobile phone coverage across regional Australia. There have now been 499 new or upgraded base stations under the rollout of this program, and that will roll out over the next three years. The full rollout from the program will provide 68,600 square kilometres of new hand-held coverage and more than 150,000 square kilometres of new external antenna coverage, providing coverage to some 3,000 mobile black spot locations nominated by members of the public.

The senator will be happy to know that the rollout of this program has started well, with both Telstra and Vodafone recently announcing their rollout schedules for the next six months. The Mobile Black Spot Programme is another example of the focus and hard work this side of the place is putting into regional Australia.