Beerwah and Glass House Mountains will receive new Telstra mobile telephone towers following the announcement of the outcomes of a tendering process to provide Federally-funded base stations on the Sunshine Coast.
Federal Member for Fisher Andrew Wallace announced the local outcomes and welcomed important progress on this 2016 Coalition election promise.
He said “This is great news for these two local communities. The lack of mobile phone reception in parts of the hinterland continues to be one of the most common issues brought to me by local residents. Business owners, students, parents and many others in the hinterland rely on their mobile phone to stay connected. I’m very pleased to announce that both of these tower projects are now locked in and ready to get underway.”
The proposals which have been selected by the Federal Government would ensure that Telstra builds ‘macro base stations’ at both priority locations. Macro base stations are the larger and more powerful type of cell, with larger antennae, mounted on towers or on existing tall buildings. These macro base stations will include a minimum of 12 hours of auxiliary back up power to ensure that they continue to operate in the case of a power outage.
The Beerwah tower will provide substantially improved Telstra coverage to the west of the Glass House Mountain National Park, while the Glass House Mountains tower will provide the same for the regions to the east and west of Old Gympie Road.
The funding is being allocated under Round 3 of the Federal Government’s Mobile Black Spot Program, and roll out of the towers is scheduled to begin in 2018.
“The previous Federal Labor Government put not one dollar into mobile phone towers. Now we have committed $220 million because we know that mobile phone coverage is critical to all Australians and their businesses” he said.
The Coalition Government has allocated $60 million in this third round to address 106 priority locations across the country that have been identified as having poor or no mobile coverage, on top of the 765 locations already being addressed under the first two rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program.
The final rollout schedules for the towers will be available on the Telstra website in the coming weeks.