ABC Radio Riverland 17 August 2026

ABC Radio Riverland • Aug 17, 2026, 7:42 AM • Item ID: R00136936399

Summary 

The Australian Telecommunications Alliance is urging local governments to expedite mobile tower approvals, citing that construction takes 1–2 weeks, but local council review and approval on planning permits takes 211 days, on average, leaving regional areas with inadequate coverage. CEO Luke Coleman criticized conflicting planning laws across over 500 councils as excessive red tape, calling for streamlined regulations to address persistent blackspots. He noted that while 4G and 5G networks benefit from the 3G switch-off, regional and remote regions still suffer due to slow approvals, citing an example of one inter-capital city fibre project requiring thousands of permits.

 

Stephanie Nitschke, ABC Riverland Breakfast Host: I’m on ABC Riverland. It’s 19 minutes to eight. And the Australian Telecommunications Alliance says it’s taking local governments too long to approve mobile towers in regional areas, leaving remote parts of the country with a sub-par service. Chief Executive Luke Coleman says mobile towers can be constructed in one to two weeks, but it takes an average of 211 days just to get approved. He says they’ve welcomed calls from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to simplify regulations, which are currently leaving people in regional areas without the coverage they need. Jackson Byrne spoke with Mr Coleman, and he said the process of building these phone towers needs to be more efficient.

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: What we’re saying is that we need to make it easier to build mobile networks in this country. We all see in regional and remote parts of Australia, you don’t have perfect coverage, there’s patches, there’s black spots, and it’s just too hard to build new mobile towers. On average, around Australia, it takes 211 days just to get a development application approval to build a new mobile tower. And this is when communities are crying out for new mobile coverage. In some cases, it can take as long as two years just to get a development approval considered and then finally approved for a mobile tower. That is way too long when regional Australia is crying out for better mobile coverage.

Jackson Byrne, ABC Radio Riverland Reporter: Yeah, and particularly in our region here in South Australia’s Riverland, we’ve had a number of spots where people are often finding there’s bad coverage. Was the removal of 3G, does that play a part in this at all?

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: We’ve actually got really good coverage of 4G and 5G in Australia. So, while the 3G networks have been switched off, what that led to was more capacity in 4G and 5G networks. So overall, it is a great thing that Australia has one of the best 4G networks in the world in terms of coverage. Overall, more coverage for regional Australia is a good thing, and that 3G switch off enabled that additional capacity for 4G. The real problem there, though, is building more towers, and it is just too hard to do that. We see example, after example, of councils holding up getting new mobile towers from being built. Sometimes it’s six months. It can be a year. It can even be two years. Now, a mobile tower can only take a week or two to actually construct it. So, the delay here is not in building the towers; it’s jumping through too many hoops. It’s going through too much red tape. There is too much bureaucracy that ius holding up new mobile towers from being built when people are crying out for more coverage.

Jackson Byrne, ABC Radio Riverland Reporter: Yeah, and you mentioned councils there. Which levels of government are responsible for this? Who gives the all clear in the end?

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: Too often we see that there are conflicting planning laws at the local government level. Telcos do have a degree of flexibility when it comes to their ability to build new mobile infrastructure, but often it gets tangled up in red tape at the local government level. There are more than 500 councils around Australia. They’ve got conflicting rules. They’ve got conflicting planning applications, development applications. And so telcos have to deal with all of this different red tape when the community is just crying out for new mobile towers to get built as quickly as possible.

Jackson Byrne, ABC Radio Riverland Reporter: How many towers is Australia short if we were to have the ideal scenario with the best internet connection possible? How many towers are we short?

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: Australia does have plenty of coverage in metro areas, regional areas, but we need more and more coverage when you get more remote. Australia has connectivity to more than 99% of people where they live and work. That’s their premises, their home, their workplace. But that is still less than 40% of the total landmass in Australia. We have got huge amounts of land that need lots of mobile towers if we’re ever going to provide enough coverage.

Jackson Byrne, ABC Radio Riverland Reporter: What sort of red tape are you talking about here? What sort of things can hold up projects like this?

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: In most cases, it’s dealing with local planning approvals, getting energy connected to towers, dealing with red tape at the local council level because there are inconsistent rules depending on which council you’re dealing with. There are inconsistent planning laws depending on which state you’re dealing with. Overall, what we are asking for is greater ability for telcos to get on with the job and build those new towers so that there’s a consistent set of planning rules across Australia; that you don’t have to be dealing with 500 different sets of rules from 500 different councils across all of the states and territories. Just let us get on with the job of delivering the coverage that Australians are crying out for.

Jackson Byrne, ABC Radio Riverland Reporter: Yeah. Is it predominantly regional and remote Australia that is most affected by these issues, getting these towers built?

Luke Coleman, CEO ATA: It can be tricky getting planning approvals, whether you’re in a metro area or a regional area, but it’s definitely regional and remote parts of Australia that suffer the most because they’re the ones who need the coverage more than anything. One example to give you; every mobile tower in Australia requires fibre backhaul. That’s a fibre optic cable that connects that tower back into the broader network. Now, in one example, one fibre connection between two capital cities, it needed 3,000 land access activity notices, 1,000 construction certificates, 1,700 land access surveys and 170 different cultural, heritage and environmental assessments. That is thousands and thousands of pieces of red tape that a telco has had to jump through just to build one fibre line between two capital cities. We have got to make it easier to build the infrastructure that regional Australia is desperately crying out for.

Stephanie Nitschke, ABC Riverland Breakfast Host: Luke Coleman there, Chief Executive of the Australian Telecommunications Alliance and he makes a lot of sense, chatting there with Jackson Byrne. It’s 13 minutes to eight.

ENDS