MELBOURNE, Nov. 20 (Xinhua Finance) -- Mobile phone blackspots in Australian bushfire-ravaged areas will remain unfixed in the near future - leading to widespread anxiety ahead of summer - despite an Australian government program set up to improve coverage.
Many residents in bushfire-prone areas of Victoria, including those from regions burned in the March fires this year, are not able to get any mobile phone reception. They are still required to drive to a place of phone coverage in order to report a fire to emergency services, or receive emergency mobile text messages.
In December last year, the federal government began the process of implementing an 85-million-U.S. dollar program to fix poor mobile coverage in the nation's regional areas. Despite more than 2,000 submissions from Victoria and 6,000 nationwide, no funding has yet been committed to building the necessary towers.
This has alarmed residents of remote areas in Victoria, with weather forecasters predicting an unusually hot summer.
Victoria was the site of Australia's worst natural disaster when, in 2009, 173 lives were lost in the Black Saturday bushfires that burned more than 4,500 square kilometers of bushland and townships.
Dr Trent Penman, a University of Melbourne academic who previously worked with the NSW Rural Fire Service, said on Thursday that areas that need to be targeted are those not only of high bushfire risk, but those of high consequence.
"We need to prioritize areas where there are single entry and exit points so that early warning systems can have the greatest effect," said Penman in an interview with Xinhua.
"It will be more difficult for (people in blackspot areas) to receive warnings which means they will have to be more proactive."
Currently, the early warning system issues warnings via landline phone calls, mobile text messages and Internet apps.
In Blackwood, a township 85 kilometers northwest of Melbourne, a blackspot was recorded only a few doors from the newly-built local fire station.
Residents said they have learnt not to rely on text message warnings from patchy mobile coverage.
"We've been here 46 years so you've got to learn not to rely on things like that, you just use your own common sense and work it out," said one local, Ray Shepherd.
Parliamentary Secretary for Communications Paul Fletcher said a competitive selection process would soon begin between the three major telecommunication companies and the locations chosen for new funding would be announced early next year, more than 18 months after the program was first proposed.
Latest comments