Mobile network upgrades have changed city life, but WAFarmers CEO Trevor Whittington says more work is needed so that all of rural Australia can benefit
Do you remember Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street, with a brick-sized mobile phone in hand, looking every bit the corporate kingpin?
Back then, mobile phones were more of an accessory than a necessity – perfect for the CBD but utterly useless once you left the city limits.
The arrival of mobiles in Australia in 1987 might have been revolutionary, but only if you stayed within the tiny coverage footprint of the 1G analogue network.
For rural Australia? Forget it.
The 1990s brought 2G – a digital upgrade with SMS (a godsend for pager users) – but coverage barely scratched the surface outside big towns.
Fun fact: 2G’s GSM network could reach up to 120km, but data? Non-existent.
It kept plenty of station people happy though, provided there was a tower within cooee.
Then came 3G in 2003. It introduced email and video calls, but let’s face it, the rollout in the bush wasn’t exactly lightning-fast.
Towers crept out across the countryside, but nowhere near the pace we see today with wind farms.
Enter Telstra’s Next G network in 2006. Built on the 850MHz band, it was a lifeline for rural Aussies, offering longer range and better building penetration.
Another fun fact: Next G set a record in 2007 when a call was made from Mount Kosciuszko to Melbourne – 200 km away. Pastoralists rejoiced; they were finally connected.
But then, the game changed with the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Data-hungry millennials devoured apps like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – all of which had recently been released – and this drove a surge in demand for faster networks.
By the time 4G arrived in 2011, the telcos had figured out where the profits were and this was in town, not in the paddocks.
Building a tower was cheap, but connecting it to fibre, powering it and upgrading it over time is where the real money gets burned.
Telstra focused on country towns with easy fibre access, leaving remote areas to rely on government subsidies like the Black Spot Program.
The problem is that funding for black spots has dried up. Round 7 was a paltry $12.5 million, which doesn’t stretch far across the whole country.
Now we’ve got 5G, which promised blazing-fast speeds. Sounds great, right? Not so fast.
It works on low, mid, and high-frequency bands.
Low-band 5G (up to 15km range) is what rural areas got, but it doesn’t offer much improvement over 4G.
Meanwhile, city folk get mmWave high-band 5G—superfast but with a range of just 250 metres.
For the bush, 5G feels like another tech hand-me-down.
While 6G is coming in 2030, with promises of microcells and speeds 100 times faster, the coverage radius is a laughable 100 metres.
This might be great for robotic surgeries, but again remains useless for farmers.
Remember TPG’s failed 4G network? They abandoned it in 2019 after Huawei was banned as a supplier.
Telstra and TPG later proposed a regional partnership: Telstra would access TPG’s spectrum, while TPG would piggyback off Telstra’s regional towers.
A win-win, surely? Not to the ACCC.
They killed the deal in 2022, citing concerns about city competition. Meanwhile, the bush was left with Telstra holding the bag.
Instead, TPG merged with Vodafone, which now shares spectrum with Optus.
Again, this is great for cities, but their rural footprint barely scratches the Wheatbelt.
Ask Telstra where they provide coverage, and you’ll get a glossy map full of blue smudges.
“Official coverage” doesn’t always translate to real-world reception and farmers need precise, paddock-level maps that show actual coverage – not the “fortuitous” signal Telstra likes to shrug off when it drops.
The federal government recently spent $17 million mapping 180,000km of highways using Australia Post vans. It’s a start, but what about the back paddock?
While waiting for the government or Telstra to act, farmers can help themselves with tech upgrades.
A GORepeater paired with a Zetifi antenna works wonders for boosting signal.
For farms beyond mobile range, Starlink satellite dishes (which have an initial fee plus a monthly subscription) are lifesavers for internet and Wi-Fi calls.
For the header, the Flat High Performance Starlink Dish offers connectivity on the move.
Yes, it’s costly, but it beats the frustration of dropping calls mid-paddock.
So, who pays for the gap? Telstra? They’re a private company now, focused on shareholders. The government? Black Spot funding has dwindled from $100 million in 2015 to just $12.4 million in 2023.
Farmers? Many already spend thousands on boosters, aerials and satellite solutions.
What’s needed is a real commitment:
• At least $100 million annually for rural towers.
• A rethink of spectrum allocation, ensuring it’s used where it’s needed.
• Incentives for telcos to build uneconomic towers, covering operational losses, not just construction costs.
If rural Australia is ever going to have reliable mobile coverage, we need a long-term plan and realistic expectations.
Let’s start by demanding better maps, smarter funding and fairer spectrum policies.
Until then, it’s up to us to make the best of the tech available and keep pushing for a fair go in the paddock.
After all, the bush has always looked after itself – but a little help wouldn’t hurt.