As American Tower CEO Jim Taiclet noted Friday morning, much of the world outside the U.S. has not yet acquired Smartphones and the world is a tower company’s oyster. So it is no wonder tower companies are working hard to make sure remote areas have reliable cell phone coverage. A recent Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) Regional Australians report found that only 37 percent of Aussies who live in remote areas use their Smartphones to access the Internet. While this is certainly a higher number than it used to be, it’s still leaps and bounds lower than those in large cities at 60 percent.
The report took a look at Australian Internet access between June, 2011, and June, 2015, “with a sample size of 15,241 across different regions in Australia: 8,039 from capital cities; 1,403 from major urban areas (regions with populations of 100,000 or more); 4,284 from urban areas (towns with populations of between 1,000 and 99,999); and 1,515 from non-urban areas (those with a population of fewer than 1,000)” according to ZDNet.
The ACMA told ZDNet that the growth can be attributed in all areas to the “federal government’s mobile blackspot initiative and National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout, which are providing more ubiquitous coverage nationwide.” Remote areas are of concern to the government’s mobile blackspot funding, with “Telstra and Vodafone securing AU $185 million in government funding to build or upgrade 499 mobile towers across Australia.” Telstra plans on building out the majority of those towers, 429 within three years. The second round of the program was announced at the end of last year, with an additional AU $60 million for better rural coverage.
The report also took a look at home broadband access, which grew “by almost the same percentage in major capital cities as it did in non-urban areas. Mobile broadband access grew slightly in categories such as via USB modems, portable WiFi modems, wireless modems, Internet keys and SIM cards.
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