Australians help identify mobile phone black spots. Photo: Shutterstock
While next-generation 5G mobile network coverage is expanding, customers still rely heavily on 4G and soon-to-be-disconnected 3G networks to fill coverage gaps outside local highways and regional centres, according to provisional figures from a nationwide mobile coverage audit.
The three-month pilot of a national mobile coverage audit, with $20 million allocated as part of the Government’s $1.1 billion Connectivity Improvement Plan for regional and rural Australia in Budget 2022, will use specialised equipment to measure coverage of Telstra, Optus and TPG’s 5G, 4G and 3G mobile networks where available, until 30 June 2027.
The pilot program, run by Accenture, will cover three roads and three locations in each state and territory, followed by a full audit over three years with drivers driving around 180,000km of local and rural roads each year.
Results from the drive tests, complemented by static signal strength meters at up to 77 locations and aimed at uncovering seasonal variations in mobile coverage due to issues such as tourism, will be published quarterly alongside crowdsourced data collected by clients using an Accenture-developed app.
The initial portion of the data, collected using the crowdsourcing capabilities of Accenture’s Telecoms Benchmarking Platform between December 2023 and February 2024, is already available through the project’s Mobile Audit Visualisation (MAV) tool.
The crowdsourced data comes from 150,000 active users across Australia providing an estimated 3.5 billion mobile coverage samples each year, and is published quarterly.
Launching the audit, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said: “This audit is crucial to identify gaps in Australia’s communications network and highlight where the industry map may not reflect the experiences of local Australians.”
“The audit will enable government and industry to make better investment decisions that will make a real difference to local people, motorists and small businesses in areas with incomplete coverage.”
The road is dotted with black spots
The launch of the audit comes at a pivotal time for mobile communications: the 3G mobile network is due to be shut down in just under four months, after Telstra recently postponed the closure by two months amid concerns that the early closure of the network would leave 740,000 Australians unable to access triple-zero emergency services, and that operators need more time to fully recreate 3G coverage over 4G.
While much of the audit’s data has yet to be collected, the crowdsourced data displayed in the MAV tool highlights continuing deficiencies in the carrier’s network that have been both praised and condemned by users in areas plagued by reception issues, wildfire threats and slow broadband service.
For example, Telstra announced earlier this year that its 5G mobile network covers 87 percent of Australia’s population, but MAV data shows that coverage is sporadic or nonexistent on roads between those areas and outside major population centers.
For example, all roads leading to Cowra, NSW had no 5G coverage and moderate 4G/3G signal strength, while two of the four roads leading to Jindabyne, NSW, had limited coverage over long stretches.
Mobile connections were also restricted on parts of the Great Ocean Road outside Port Fairy, as well as long sections of the Princes Highway and Glenelg River Road outside Mount Gambier in South Australia, the Eyre Highway through the state’s western outback, the Great Northern Highway in the Northern Territory, the Palmerston Highway in Queensland, and large areas around regional centres such as Williams in Western Australia and Theodore in Queensland.
Detailed data from the audit will help network operators better plan future cell tower rollouts and focus funding under programs such as the federal government’s Mobile Black Spot Program, which has deployed about 1,400 mobile cell towers through seven rounds of funding to date.
When Rowland launched the audit program’s comment period last year, he said the audits “will help identify mobile blackspots and capacity issues where predictive maps do not reflect local experience.”
