Vodafone CEO Inaki Berroeta has plan to reduce regional mobile blackspots

Mr Berroeta said Vodafone was determined to improve its coverage in rural areas and give customers an alternative to Telstra and Optus.

However he said it was possible to compete with a company that was receiving public money to build towers in blackspot areas, which generated more revenue for Telstra from those customers.

“We want to be able to offer in regional Australia the same quality of service that we offer in Sydney and we also want to be an alternative provider to the existing providers,” Mr Berroeta said.

“We are looking at our investment and we are also participating in the mobile blackspot program with the government and other parties. The third part is we are promoting domestic roaming.

“This part of Australia has such a low population density that it isn’t possible to build parallel networks and the best solution is to have a single network and have co-investment to share the cost of investment.”

Mr Berroeta’s proposal would involve mobile users being able to connect to towers from other networks if their own was unavailable, with that person’s provider paying a fee to the owner of the tower.

He said that was fair to the owner of the towers, other providers and all customers.

“The existing network belongs to Telstra but a part of this network was build by the taxpayer. The taxpayer was the real investor in regional Australia,” he said.

Mr Berroeta has been on a tour of regional NSW, which included Tamworth, Orange and Bathurst and said people were frustrated.

“Australia has one of the infrastructures when it comes to mobile networks in the capital cities, best worldwide, but it is a huge gap to rural areas, where mobile communications is one of the biggest concerns of residents,” he said.

“There is a huge difference between what you can get in Sydney and surrounding areas compared to towns west of Dubbo.”

“Dubbo’s network is good but once you start driving around, you can see the gaps.”