The Federal Government's Mobile Black Spot Program is one of the largest ever expansions of mobile coverage in regional and remote Australia. Starting with ‘Round 1’ in 2015, multiple new areas have received mobile network coverage with ‘Round 5A’ most recently announced in July 2021.
After this latest supplement to Round 5, and once all five rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program are completed, Telstra will have invested up to $300 million and built around 930 new sites to improve coverage for regional areas around the country – more than 2/3rd of the total 1296 sites co-funded by Government under the Program since 2015.
In addition, as part of Telstra’s contribution to the Black Spot Program over this period, we have deployed more than 200 small cells for regional community connectivity at Telstra’s sole expense.