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courtesy: www.acorn.net.au

"The program will fund new infrastructure for a list of priority locations, to extend terrestrial mobile phone coverage in rural and regional Australia," Senator Conroy said.

"The locations were chosen, drawing on advice from the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee which has undertaken extensive consultation throughout regional Australia over the past months."

Currently, terrestrial mobile coverage reaches 99 per cent of the population. Satellite mobile phone services cover the entire Australian landmass and population and are available from a number of providers, according to government figures.

The Satellite Phone Subsidy Scheme remains available to provide funding to increase the affordability of mobile satellite telephony for people living or working in areas that do not have coverage from terrestrial mobile phone networks.