The Mobile Carriers Forum (MCF) met with four Perth Councils this week to discuss Council policies which severely restrict the provision of mobile network services to residential areas.

The Cities of Cockburn, Wanneroo, Joondalup and the Shire of Kalamunda restrict the development of towers to locations beyond 500m from residential zoned land, severely limiting the ability of the carriers to provide coverage in areas which are almost entirely residential.

The policies, which are purportedly based on the need to protect visual amenity, are in fact a reaction from Councils to concern about impact of radiofrequency electromagnetic energy (EME or EMF) on perceived ‘sensitive areas’. A ‘sensitive area’ is generally defined in the Council policies as being residential areas or schools.

“The Carriers acknowledge that there is a degree of community concern about EME and this is why the industry applies a precautionary approach, which requires the carriers to minimise emissions while maintaining quality phone calls. By imposing zones ,excluding a telecommunications facility from all residential areas, Councils are directing Carriers to sites where they may in fact need to operate a facility at a higher power, resulting in higher EME,” said MCF Program Manager Matt Evans.

The four Councils combined cover an area of more than 1278 square kilometres of the metropolitan and residential growth areas of Perth – an area which Australia’s mobile network carriers including Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Hutchison are endeavouring to provide depth of coverage with quality mobile network signals.

“Despite Council policies which are very restrictive, the carriers have managed to negotiate a reasonable outcome to-date,” said Mr Evans. “But we’ve made it very clear that we will not be able to provide the same quality of coverage if these Councils continue to enforce these policies”.

With a combined population of 450,000 people and more than 400,000 mobile network subscriptions, the four council areas cover a substantial and growing segment of the Perth market.

“Perth's total population will jump from about 1.5 million to 2.1 million people by 2021, a growth rate of 43 per cent. Mobile networks will need to cater for an even greater level of subscriber growth during this time,” said Mr Evans.

“Voice and wireless broadband services delivered by mobile networks are major drivers of productivity and growth in the Western Australian economy. The MCF will continue to work with the WA State Government and 15 metropolitan Councils with exclusion zones to allow for improved network deployment”.