Lost in the Signal – Mobile Connectivity (Part B)

Last Post, I explored the history of mobile coverage in Western Australia. This week, let’s dig into what’s gone wrong and what can be done to improve connectivity in the bush, particularly following the recent shutdown of 3G.

What Does "Good Coverage" Really Mean?

To start, let’s clarify the difference between what you think of as good coverage and what your local telco—usually Telstra in the bush—considers acceptable. On many farms or rural properties, you’ve likely experienced coverage in areas not shaded on the telco’s maps. This is what’s called “fortuitous coverage.” It’s when you manage to get a bar or two of signal, but it’s not something you can rely on.

So, what do telcos guarantee when you sign up for a mobile plan? Unfortunately, very little. A look at the fine print reveals that no minimum level of service is mandated, thanks to the government’s failure to set coverage standards when the spectrum was first sold.

Monopolies, Duopolies, and the TPG Saga

The heart of the problem lies in competition policy—or lack thereof—which has left rural Australians worse off. Back in 2019, TPG abandoned its plans to build a 4G network after its main equipment supplier, Huawei, was banned from operating in Australia. By 2022, TPG and Telstra proposed a resource-sharing partnership. Telstra would gain access to TPG’s unused spectrum, while TPG would benefit from Telstra’s regional tower network.

This arrangement, which could have vastly improved rural connectivity, was blocked by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC argued that it would reduce competition in urban areas, prioritizing theoretical market dynamics over the practical needs of rural Australians. As a result, valuable 3G spectrum went unused, Telstra’s network remained overstretched, and TPG was left with no choice but to merge with Vodafone.

The impact? TPG’s footprint is minuscule compared to Optus, which is itself only half the size of Telstra’s coverage in the Wheatbelt. The only beneficiaries are residents of larger regional towns that already have infrastructure for all three providers.

Telstra’s Burden and Optus’s Indifference

For much of rural Australia, Optus has no financial incentive to expand its network, leaving Telstra as the sole viable option. But Telstra can’t deliver improved coverage without access to TPG’s unused spectrum—a resource that sits underutilised as a result of the ACCC’s decision.

Meanwhile, the federal government appears paralysed, unsure how to unravel the mess created by its own competition watchdog. Laws that require telcos to share towers are ignored, and there’s no political will or corporate interest in building more towers in underserved areas.

A Misplaced Focus

All that the government could dream up was to spent $17 million commissioning a national audit of mobile coverage on regional roads, using Australia Post’s 180,000km delivery network to map connectivity. While this may help farmers near major routes, it’s of little use for those whose work begins in the back paddock.

What the government should have done is assess the impact of the 3G shutdown across every last hectare of paddock not every km of rural highways. This includes measuring how reallocating the 850 MHz spectrum to 4G and 5G has affected coverage during peak season such as harvest. Without such data, it’s impossible to pinpoint the cause of new black spots that have appeared in areas where coverage was reliable as recently as October before 3G was turn off.

Why 3G Was Better for the Bush

The reality that the government does not want to talk about is that 3G’s technology was better suited for long-range communication. The 850 MHz spectrum provided reliable signal quality over large distances. In contrast, 5G employs advanced technologies like Massive MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output) and beamforming to vastly boost data capacity and speed. While these features are excellent for streaming TikTok videos if you are 5, 10, 15km from the tower areas, they struggle to match 3G’s straightforward, long-range performance which could easily carry a call 30, 40 or 50km.

Think of it as replacing a robust, old Cummins engine in your old 1980s Stiger with a high-tech, Euro 6 model. On paper, the new engine is more efficient and powerful, but when put to work it doesn’t mesh well with the old gearbox, limiting its performance under heavy loads. Similarly, 5G isn’t designed to handle the jobs 3G excelled at. Its horses for courses.  Unfortunately we need 5G as we now all have smart phones and want to see videos of how to tune the new engine in the paddock.  Problem is we lack the towers to plug the gaps that have been created with the 3 G shut down.

What Can Farmers Do?

For farmers looking to improve connectivity, while they lobby their local MP for more towers there are aftermarket solutions available, though none are perfect.

• GO Repeaters ($816) and Zetifi (multi band) antennas ($549) are popular options. Interestingly, tests show that smaller, low-gain antennas can sometimes outperform high-gain models, depending on the terrain, so multi band is the way to go.
• ZetiRover X ($2,200) creates a 300m Wi-Fi zone by linking everyones phone to the the antenna on a header or chaser bin. This effectively acts as a mini mobile tower, but it still requires a connection to a nearby Telstra or Optus tower.
• Iridium Sat Phones ($2,295 plus $100/month) offer old-school reliability but are clunky and expensive.
• SpaceX Starlink is the Musk have option. A stationary dish costs $599 with a $125 monthly fee, providing internet and Wi-Fi phone coverage for your house, header, or caravan. The mobile version, however, costs $3,740 and $170/month. Some farmers have improvised by bolting the stationary dish onto their headers and using it on the move though this comes with the risk of being cut off as Starlink enforces its mobile pricing plans.  (Check out the you tube videos of mobile star link installs)

Despite these innovations, none of these options will come close to having a mobile tower bridge the gaps left by the 3G shutdown.

Building Private Towers

For those desperate to stay connected, private joint ventures to build shared towers are becoming more common. Imagine the coverage a 60m tower on Mt Matilda, Kokerbin Rock, or the Humps at Hyden could provide. But such a project is expensive. A typical tower costs around $1 million,plus $100k a year expenses; including construction, radio heads, base stations, power, and ongoing leases for land and microwave data. Spread across 10 farmers and 100,000 hectares over 10 years, the cost might be justifiable, but it’s still a hefty investment.

Who Should Pay?

This raises a critical question: who is responsible for bridging the connectivity gap? Should it be the government, the telcos, or those who choose to live in the bush?

Optus and TPG aren’t viable candidates. Optus has little incentive to expand its network, and TPG’s existing footprint is too small. Telstra is busy building 5G microgrids in Melbourne, catering to high-earning urbanites addicted to social media so they are not coming to the party without government subsidies.

That leaves the federal government and its Black Spot program. While $55 million has been announced for the program’s latest round, the focus is now on disaster backup systems rather than addressing rural connectivity gaps.  So no more towers for the foreseeable future.

A Path Forward

If rural Australia is to have reliable mobile coverage, the government must refocus its efforts. The Black Spot program needs to prioritize building more towers, mapping coverage gaps in paddocks—not just along highways—and reallocating underused spectrum.

This plan should include a commitment to build 2,500 new towers in paddocks over four years at a cost of $2.5 billion across Australia, effectively doubling the network that Telstra has across the nations rural farming regions. By comparison, the government is already spending $100 billion on renewable energy infrastructure, including 20,000 high-tension power line towers and 3,000 wind turbines each 3 times the size of a mobile tower. Surely improving connectivity is just as vital.

Conclusion

By 2030, we risk having less reliable power, worse communication networks, and a larger national debt if current trends continue.

Rural Australians deserve better. Restoring phone coverage to the reliable levels once provided by the 3G network should be a top priority over the next 12 months. Beyond that, we need a national initiative on the scale of the NBN, which has delivered high-speed internet to 10 million households at a cost of $51 billion since its launch in 2009. A similar commitment—investing $500 million annually over the next five years—should be made to address the glaring gaps in mobile connectivity across the country. (electronic copies of these articles can be found in SubStack – The Dry Farmer)