Mobile signal audit using AusPost vehicles to collect data from year end

A $20 million national audit of mobile coverage that will use Australia Post vehicles to collect signal strength data is likely to begin data collection “towards the end” of 2023.

The timeline, as well as an update on the effort, was provided on Thursday morning in senate estimates.

The project was announced late last year as a way to better identify blackspots and guide investment priorities, particularly for infrastructure co-funded by the government.

A technical adviser for the project was recently sought by the department of infrastructure, transport, regional development, communications and the arts, which has oversight.

Deputy secretary for communications and media Richard Windeyer said the final design for the audit is still being worked through.

“I think at the moment we would hope to be going to market for someone to conduct the audit with the use of Australia Post vehicles in the coming months, and then hopefully we’d start having data available towards the end of the year, but we are still in the process of actually finalising the design and working out how best to go to market,” Windeyer said.

Windeyer noted that as the funding for the project extends over a number of years, so could the audit.

“The intention is that it could run for some time, which could be a) about just covering the territory and b) it may be that one of the things we design for is having some time-series to it, so that we can see what’s changed over time,” Windeyer said.

“We’re just trying to work through how best to do it - how best to get useful information on coverage, and I suppose by definition areas without coverage, noting a very large landmass that we would need to map. That is all part of the design at the moment. 

“We’re very keen to work out how to make sure that we get useful information that can help inform consumers and possibly policy design and also investment targeting for solving blackspot programs.”

Australia Post’s CEO Paul Graham said that his organisation had now “provided all the necessary information requested by the department into the role that Australia Post will play in this initiative”.

“We are awaiting feedback from the department as to the next phase of that engagement,” he said.

“It is a complicated project.”

Graham noted that one of the challenges is that while Australia Post vehicles “cover a great deal of Australia, there are gaps in our network where we will not be able to provide assistance to the initiative.”

“The department, I believe, is working through how they will manage that process,” Graham said.

Senator Carol Brown, who represents the Communications Minister Michelle Rowland in senate estimates, said the department would augment signal strength data collected by Australia Post vehicles “with the purchase of commercially available data.”

Graham added that the signal strength sensor is about “the size of a pack of playing cards”. He said that Australia Post vehicles already had “a number of devices” fitted to them, including for telematics, but tests had shown they could carry the extra monitoring device as well.

“This is a very small device that gets fitted as a matter of course when the bikes come back for their maintenance and checks,” Graham said.

“We have tested and validated that all our equipment is able to host the device that records the strength of the signal, and that device then gets returned to a depot where it then gets uploaded to a database that is then used as part of the audit.”