ABC Radio Gold Coast Mornings 23 July 2026
ABC Gold Coast Mornings • Jul 23, 2026, 8:53 AM • Item ID: R00135899687
Summary
Concerns are mounting over South East Queensland’s mobile network capacity ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, as the Australian Telecommunications Alliance warns that duplicative and bureaucratic local planning laws are delaying new mobile tower deployments by up to two years. The delays create a patchwork of requirements across councils, slowing infrastructure needed for population growth and the global spotlight. Luke Coleman, alliance head, urges streamlining approvals to ensure telcos can provide the capacity and coverage necessary for the anticipated surge of visitors during the Games.
Nicole Dyer, ABC Gold Coast Mornings Host: As the countdown to Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games continues, questions are being raised about whether South East Queensland’s mobile network will cope. The Australian Telecommunications Alliance says lengthy planning delays are holding up new mobile infrastructure across the region, including areas that will be under much more pressure as the Olympic Games approach. Our very own Daniel Mahe spoke with Luke Coleman, head of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, about the potential reality that many of you will face if these delays continue.
Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: We’ve got to make it easier to roll out mobile towers on the Gold Coast. What we’ve found is that planning laws are holding up the deployment of new mobile towers for almost two years in some cases. It’s just too difficult to get these towers rolled out. I think a lot of people on the Gold Coast might have experienced outages in recent times. And that’s when you really remember just how essential your mobile phone is. We don’t just use our phones for making calls. We use it to pay for our coffee at the cafe in the morning. If you’re tapping onto the bus, when you’re going to work, mobile phones are an absolutely essential part of everyday life. But local planning laws, they’re duplicative, they’re slow, they’re bureaucratic. And so, while are crying out for better mobile coverage and better mobile services, it’s those local planning laws that are making them harder and harder to build those new mobile towers.
Danielle Mahe, ABC Gold Coast Reporter: The population is growing fast and will be in the global spotlight in 2032. Why is now the time to act?
Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: It can take a long time to plan these towers. Getting them built actually only takes a couple of weeks. When you want to build one of those towers, the construction of it is not the hard part. But planning for the tower itself, getting fibre optic cables to the tower so that it can get connected back into the internet, getting power connected to the tower, all of these things spend a long time in planning, but they often get blocked up at the local government planning level where you’ve got different laws, depending if it’s a local government area, or a priority development area; there are different planning frameworks. There’s different requirements, depending on which council you’re dealing with in some cases. It’s really complicated, and particularly as we’re working our way towards the Olympics, we want to have the best mobile coverage in the world, the fastest mobile speeds, particularly when you’ve got new growth areas as well. You’ve got new houses being built. You expect when you move into a new house, you’re going to have electricity, you’re going to have water. All of those things are built into these planning frameworks, but mobile coverage is not. And for many people, that’s the most essential thing. You’re going to be very cautious about moving into a new property if you haven’t got mobile coverage, but having mobile towers is not included as part of those planning frameworks. We think that’s something that needs to be fixed.
Danielle Mahe, ABC Gold Coast Reporter: What are the main factors stopping new mobile infrastructure from being built across South East Queensland?
Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: What we see is a patchwork of different planning requirements, that different areas will have extensive investigations of alternative sites because everybody wants to have mobile coverage, but nobody wants to have a mobile tower in their backyard. But when you get thrown back and forth looking at these different sites, it can literally add years to the process of getting a new mobile tower approved. You can have disproportionate requirements for visual amenity. You can have repeated challenges to technical designs, including the height of the tower or the coverage objectives. There’s increasingly detailed specialist reporting requirements. I could go on, but the basic fact is there is way too much red tape that makes it so difficult to build new mobile towers. Of course, the telcos want to provide the best coverage that you can get. Every telco is out there competing every day to win your business, but we need to make it easier to get planning approval so those new towers and those faster speeds can be delivered as quickly as possible.
Danielle Mahe, ABC Gold Coast Reporter: Another issue you haven’t mentioned yet is that some residents actually don’t want these mobile towers being built next to their homes.
Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: There are often concerns raised in local communities about visual amenity of towers, for example, but you will find that there is always the silent majority that just want better coverage. I’ve been to areas that have had new towers that have been supported by government funding because there’s been such an outcry about black spots in a local area and still some people will be saying we don’t want that new tower, we don’t want to see it near the football field or whatever the case might be. There are already extensive requirements on telcos when it comes to deploying that infrastructure to ensure that there’s visual amenity, to ensure that there is public safety requirements that are adhered to but overall, everybody wants better mobile coverage and we need better planning approval processes to ensure that the telcos can deliver it.
Danielle Mahe, ABC Gold Coast Reporter: If these planning delays aren’t fixed, what could that mean for locals, businesses and visitors during the Olympics?
Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: Ultimately, it means we won’t have as much mobile capacity and coverage as we should have. If telcos are spending all of their time tangled up in bureaucratic red tape, that means it’s less time and less investment that they can put into building those towers themselves. When we have the Olympics, there is going to be a surge of people coming into Queensland. They’re all going to have an iPhone or an Android phone in their pocket. They’re going to be connected to 5G. They’re going to be watching the Olympics on their phones. Even when they’re at the venue, we see people love watching the Olympics or any sporting event on their phones while they’re watching it live as well. That requires a huge amount of investment from the telcos. It requires more capacity, more towers, more radio access equipment. All of that requires a lot of planning and a lot of financial investment. So, we don’t want to waste the telcos time tangled up in red tape. We want them out there building and delivering better mobile coverage across the Gold Coast.
Nicole Dyer, ABC Gold Coast Mornings Host: Removing red tape, getting those mobile phone towers happening on the Gold Coast. They are the thoughts of Luke Coleman, who is CEO of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance, which is the primary peak body representing telecommunications industry here in Australia. Can you see where he’s coming from? Do you have any thoughts on mobile towers? You might want to chime in on that one. You can text me on 0487 993 222.
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