Mobile phone towers will be reinforced and internet satellite trucks deployed under a bushfire resilience package designed to prepare Australia's telecommunications networks for increasingly severe disasters.
The federal government has announced the four-pronged, $37 million strategy after the unprecedented bushfire season exposed vulnerabilities in phone and internet networks. The crisis knocked out more than 1000 phone towers and other facilities across south-east Australia.
Under the resilience package, the government will put $18 million towards strengthening mobile phone base stations to deal with loss of mains power, which was the main cause of outages.
A total of $10 million will come from the existing mobile black spot program for regional areas and upgrades will include longer-lasting backup power such as batteries and generators.
Another $10 million will be used to purchase portable facilities – including NBN Co's "Road Muster" satellite trucks and "cells on wheels" to be operated by telcos – which can temporarily restore services in areas suffering outages.
A further $7 million will go towards installing about 2000 NBN Co satellites at rural fire stations and evacuation centres and $2.1 million will be spent on improving access to information on telecommunications during emergencies.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said Australia needed to learn the lessons of the 2019-20 bushfire season and ensure people could communicate with family and essential services during disasters.
"These measures are an important step in further strengthening our telco networks," he said.
Regional Communications Minister Mark Coulton said the measures supplemented funding already provided under the government's mobile black spot program and meant regional areas would be "much better prepared during future emergencies".
A key goal of the package is to introduce more "redundancy" in networks so people could continue to access services when infrastructure was knocked out.
An Australian Communications and Media Authority review of the summer bushfires' impact on communications networks found a total 888 separate outage incidents of four hours or more, with some facilities going down multiple times.
NSW accounted for most, with 681 incidents. The vast majority were caused by loss of power, with only 1 per cent caused by direct fire damage. The average length of an outage was 3.5 days and the issue peaked over the New Year because of the Currowan, Green Valley and East Gippsland fires.
The telecommunications resilience measures are part of an overall $650 million rebuilding package for local councils and communities affected by the bushfires. The assistance is the last major element of the $2 billion bushfire recovery fund.