The competitive mobiles market in Australia has performed extremely well in delivering services to more than 99% of the population, but in a country the size of ours, there are people living in areas where there is no commercial business case to invest. The Mobile Black Spot Program combines public and private funds to address some of these black spot areas.
The Australian mobiles market is open and competitive. Wherever we invest to build our network, our competitors can too. All the research confirms that millions of Australians choose Telstra over our competitors because we give them what they want – the best and largest national mobile network and the products and services they value.
We offer a range of different plans at different price points and do so on a national basis, so regional customers who receive coverage under this program will receive the same prices as customers in Sydney and Melbourne.
The Mobile Black Spot Program tenders were open and competitive processes. All carriers had an equal opportunity to put in the best bids to deliver new coverage. We put a lot of work into developing our bids in terms of delivering new coverage and these are so far backed by up to $300 million of our own capital.
We are proud to have put forward strong bids for regional Australia and look forward to rolling out the new mobile sites and introducing or expanding coverage for hundreds of communities over the next few years.