They may be delivering letters less frequently, but posties and truckers will bring something special to regional areas during this year’s Christmas parcel rush – with many of Australia Post’s more than 15,000 vehicles set to be equipped with mobile signal measurement devices from this month.
Delivery vans and long-haul delivery vehicles will have the devices installed to collect data for the National Audit of Mobile Coverage (NAMC), which was announced earlier this year as part of a raft of measures in the government’s $1.1 billion Better Connectivity Plan for Regional and Rural Australia.
The audit is being managed by Accenture Australia, which will collect data on 4G and 5G mobile signal strength as the delivery vehicles wend their way across 180,000km of regional and rural roads during the annual surge in Christmas season deliveries – which last year saw over 100 million packages delivered, even as Australia Post reduced the frequency of uneconomical letter deliveries to every other business day.
Some 63,000 Australia Post employees service Australia’s 11.7 million addresses with a fleet of 10,700 trucks, small trucks, vans, passenger cars and petrol and electric motorcycles as well as 3,500 vehicles operated by delivery partners – which collectively carry the company’s staff an average of 17 million kilometres per month.
An NAMC pilot is currently nearing completion, with the Australia Post contract set to support the main audit when it starts later this month – with the audit to be repeated each year for the next three years.
Accenture will also install the devices in over 70 post offices to provide baseline measurements from fixed locations nationwide.
“Engaging Australia Post in the audit, and leveraging its networks, will help to ensure we get a comprehensive picture of mobile coverage across the country,” Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland said in announcing the new arrangements, which will see Australia Post benefit from some of the $20 million allocated towards the audit earlier this year.
That audit, Rowland said, “will provide important national data to help target future investment” – as well as providing real-world data to help the government ensure that 4G and 5G coverage fills any blackspots left after the 3G mobile network is finally shut off on 28 October.
All hands on deck
The kick-off of the full-featured NAMC project is just part of a government full-court press designed to resolve Australia’s long-running mobile connectivity gap once and for all, with residents in rural and remote areas struggling to get even basic connectivity even as CBD residents casually access 5G mobile networks capable of delivering blistering speeds.
Recent Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) figures found that regional residents lodge 47 complaints about their services every day – part of a climate of ongoing discontent that led the ACCC to recently greenlight a TPG-Optus network merger that is expected to significantly increase regional coverage.
The situation is likely even worse than the complaints figures suggest, ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett warned as the latest TIO figures were released, noting that more than half of consumers report having at least one problem with their communications services over the last year – and suggesting that “consumers are disengaging from a complaints system they’ve lost confidence in.”
“What we hear from Australians is that the complaints process is too laborious, and is simply not worth their time,” she said, noting that only 10 per cent of consumers will escalate their complaints to the TIO.
As well as working to improve service quality, availability and speed, the government also this month launched an online project noticeboard to solicit community input for the targeting of $20 million in funding for the latest round of the Mobile Network Hardening Program (MNHP) – with portable generators, power backup upgrades, and physical mobile tower hardening among the measures mooted to boost resilience.
