Interview with Nadia Mitsopoulos, ABC Radio Perth

NADIA MITSOPOULOS, HOST: I want to now talk about mobile phone blackspots and the poor coverage across much of WA, which has long been a source of frustration, I would imagine, for a lot of you. So will another $16 million fix the problem? Well, that's what's being spent on a couple of busy highways in WA, notorious for mobile black spots.
 
Michelle Rowland is the Federal Communications Minister and I spoke to her about this earlier this morning.
 
MICHELLE ROWLAND, MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS: Good morning.
 
MITSOPOULOS: $16 million to fix mobile phone black spots. What are you doing exactly?
 
ROWLAND: Well, this is a partnership between the Western Australian Government and the Commonwealth. We identified last year that there were opportunities for us to pilot some programs that would make a difference, particularly along major regional routes. In this case, Minister Don Punch identified highways, in particular, the Albany and also the Great Eastern Highway – areas that have really scant mobile coverage, but areas that are also particularly susceptible to not only disasters but also for emergencies.

This is a collaboration under what we call the RRAMP, the Regional Roads Australia Mobile Program - and it means that the state of Western Australia will be able to go out to tender, basically, to say to the industry: what can you do to assist us with constructing these terrestrial base stations? How can we have these improvements? But importantly, what kind of innovation can be offered? As your listeners will know, sometimes when you're in particular parts of Australia, you may only be serviced by one mobile operator. We want to ensure that there's that opportunity there for there to be multi-carrier technologies deployed, so irrespective of the mobile network people are on, they're able to access these services. We know how important it is to tourists, but also to ensure that there's better coverage for residents - thinking about truck stops as well, some of these seasonal areas that have high levels of people coming in for tourist reasons.
 
MITSOPOULOS: Is this more than just building more mobile phone towers?
 
ROWLAND: It certainly is - it's about also incentivising the network operators to do more in terms of making sure that they can have better coverage. It also is around some of the resilience that's involved in this as well. We know that in many cases it can be a matter of life and death if the network can stay on the air for longer. This is an important step forward in recognising that some of those particular routes that have been an issue for some time. As your listeners will know, these routes are hundreds of kilometres long.

No one's estimating that this will solve every single black spot, but it will make a difference in those areas. We'll take the lessons from that, because I think it's fair to say, gone are the days when there was that low hanging fruit of mobile network operators saying: I would deploy in this area if I had a bit of a subsidy. Most of those areas are now done. We're now looking at areas that are really are on the margins, but are nevertheless important for the people who use them.
 
MITSOPOULOS: But they're not overly remote areas, either. I mean, we're talking about Albany Highway between Bedfordale and Albany Airport. That's not that far away, and the Great Eastern Highway around Meckering, for instance – I mean, these are not remote areas.
 
ROWLAND: You're absolutely right, and they’re areas that are high use as well. I'm sure many of your listeners would be using them on a semi-regular basis. So yes, this is responding to need.
 
MITSOPOULOS: Does this mean the telcos need to work together - sharing facilities?
 
ROWLAND: That is a very good summary. There has been a reluctance to do that – and, sometimes the reason given is technical, but we want to encourage more sharing. We want to encourage better use of investment. These are often high cost towers, particularly if they're in remote areas. It also means that there's sometimes issues with obtaining the right approvals processes to get these done. It takes a long time to construct some of them.
 
What I will say is this is an important component in our Regional Connectivity Plan that we've got, but also, we're reforming as a Government our Universal Service Obligations. Your listeners might not be aware also that Universal Service is basically defined as a voice service through a fixed line. It certainly hasn't kept pace with mobile technologies, or the rise of new technologies like Low Earth Orbit satellites.
 
As a Government, we have committed not only to problem identification here, but also change. This is also coinciding with the statutory requirement for us to have a Regional Telecommunications Review.

Not only do we have the levels of technological innovation, but we also have a desire at a policy level to focus on resilience and focus on disaster management. As we have seen, through various events like natural disasters and the Optus outage late last year, the reliance on mobile services continues to grow.
 
MITSOPOULOS: And that Universal Service Obligation, could it be that the obligation will no longer be providing a landline, but providing mobile coverage?
 
ROWLAND: These are some of the options we're looking at, but I think it's fair to say that it needs to be more flexible and there needs to be a mix. Currently, Telstra is the designated Universal Service Provider, so we're also consulting widely on what kind of funding options there are, because currently the rest of the industry basically pays into a fund that is administered by Telstra. That contract is due to come to an end in the next decade. So we want to ensure that we get the settings in place now, that they're fit for purpose, that they're flexible for the future and they respond to the needs of Australians, because connectivity has never been more important.
 
MITSOPOULOS: We are a big state, and I'm sure there's a lot of people listening in regional WA saying: I have to leave my house or leave my farm and go two kilometres up the hill and turn left and go right and put the mobile phone up and finally get a signal. I mean, they’re black spots all over the state.
 
ROWLAND: I have no doubt, and the reality too is that as this technology develops, we need to ensure the regulatory settings are also keeping pace with that. The other thing I'll point out to you - we're talking also about remote indigenous communities. We're not just taking a one size fits all approach here. We have, through another program that we've got delivering, free community Wi-Fi to those areas. Now, that's not only providing broadband accessibility, but that sort of coverage also boosts mobile capacity as well.
 
MITSOPOULOS: You're listening to Michelle Rowland, the Minister for Communications. At the end of October, Telstra and Optus will switch off their 3G network. Vodafone has already done that. Are you confident the time is right, or would you have liked another delay?
 
ROWLAND: I want to stress from the start that the Government supports this switchover, and Australians have always been early adopters [of new technology]. Now, we do know that at the beginning of this year, we identified that there were a large number of handsets that weren't able to access Triple Zero after the switchover. When we identified the scale of this, 740,000 or so devices around Australia, I immediately stood up a Working Group and had regular reports from industry on how they were contacting these customers and how to identify these handsets.
 
A lot of these people who own these handsets were often of lower socioeconomic means, live in regional areas and probably didn't upgrade their phones as often as their metro counterparts. We've now got that down to around 71,000 right around Australia, so that's a massive drop. But the more important issue here at the moment is the other devices – so not just our typical handsets. So we're talking here about medical alarms, often unmonitored medical alarms, some EFTPOS machines. You think about the number of devices that are reliant on mobile services, and it is huge. I must say that since 2019, when the switchover was announced by the industry, there has been considerable work done.
 
I urge all your listeners, particularly if they've got loved ones with medical devices, to check with their supplier that they are compatible - they may need to obtain a new or upgraded device. We know the sector has been working closely with the mobile operators, but there are some devices that aren't actually capable of being identified as connected to a network. That's the area of concern.
 
MITSOPOULOS: Finally, Minister the expectation is that the Government will not bring in a total gambling ad ban, even though polls show about 80 per cent of people would like you to. Are you buckling to the pressure of media companies, and are you losing your social conscience over this issue?
 
ROWLAND: I want to be very clear that the reason why the Albanese Government has been taking action in this area is because, firstly, we appreciate the high level of community concern.
 
We have three underlying principles here: the first is to break that nexus that has emerged between wagering and sport, the second is protecting vulnerable Australians, particularly children, and the third is dealing with the saturation and targeting of ads - particularly towards one of the most highly-vulnerable cohorts a­­nd that is young men aged around 18 to 35.
 
MITSOPOULOS: That’s why people want you to ban the ads.
 
ROWLAND: Well, that has been our motivation here. It's been on harm prevention and also harm minimisation. We have done more in our first term than any other previous Government when it comes to initiating harm reduction.
 
We have one year of BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, with some 28,000 people registered for that. We've instituted a ban on credit cards for online wagering -
 
MITSOPOULOS: I don't mean to be rude; I appreciate what your Government's done. My question is about banning gambling ads. That's just what I want to focus on. Why won't you do that when 80 per cent of the public would like you to?
 
ROWLAND: Well, again, I'll say two things in response to that: firstly, we are undertaking an orderly consultation process on this matter. We are doing this in a way that understands that there is a high degree of community concern. The second point is people want to see cultural change; advertising is one component of that. There are many other components here.
 
So, we will continue to undertake this consultation, and make a decision and have recommendations put to Government in an orderly way, because we recognise how important this is - people are sick of seeing the number of sports wagering ads.
 
I should also just point out for context, that while there is a $25 billion loss from gambling in Australia, the vast majority of that actually comes from land-based gambling - casinos and pokies. We know, however, that volume of sports-related wagering is increasing. We want to go where those audiences are. We know that young people and young men in particular, in that vulnerable cohort, are not necessarily looking at the broadcast terrestrial platform, they are obtaining their information from other means.
 
MITSOPOULOS: But you're under a lot of pressure from the media companies to maintain some form of ads on their networks? Surely you’ve got to question if there are companies that are relying so heavily on one revenue stream, maybe their business model is broken?

ROWLAND: Well, let me be very clear: we appreciate that this is an area of high concern to Australians, and rightly so. We also appreciate the fact that media diversity is important to Australians, particularly in regional areas, where often we have news deserts, where we have regional media and public interest journalism being challenged. 

We all, as Australians, value the fact that we have Australian drama, Australian voices and public interest journalism, which is being challenged from a variety of sources. Everything from the rise of the digital platforms to the withdrawal of Meta from news services, and that impact from the News Media Bargaining Code. All of these are matters that are before Government at the moment.

As a Government, we are looking not only at the important areas of harm minimisation when it comes to wagering advertising. We are also looking at ways in which we can support the media sector in a way that ensures its sustainability, because until someone invents a stable, free, ubiquitous platform that competes with the broadcasting media, then broadcasting media will continue to be important for all Australians.
 
Now, I will say this about the importance of getting this right. We know that this is one of the levers, which is why I sought to articulate what we are doing in other areas in terms of harm prevention. We will take a consultative approach to this. We will reach a decision on this based on evidence, based on the fact that we understand that saturation and that cultural change needs to occur. That is solely what we are focused on as a Government in achieving in this area.