The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, announced that over $5 million has been allocated through the $421 million Networking the Nation (NtN) program for 25 terrestrial mobile telephony projects in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.
"The 25 projects will further enhance mobile communications coverage in many parts of rural, regional and remote Australia", Senator Alston said.
These latest NtN applications have the potential to take CDMA coverage to an additional 80,000 square kilometres, increasing CDMA coverage by an additional 8%.
The total network is expected to cover 1 million square kilometres, covering more than 14% of the Australian land mass and twice the area covered by the old analogue network.
It is anticipated that an additional 30,000 people will now have access to mobile phones taking the total population covered to over 97%.
