18 May 2022

New mobile phone tower for Vivonne Bay │ The Islander

By STAN GORTON

Residents and visitors to Vivonne Bay on Kangaroo Island will soon have better connectivity with an upgraded mobile phone tower.

More than $125,000 will be invested to upgrade a Telstra macro mobile site at the south coast location to enable improved mobile coverage.

The tower is funded through the federal government's Regional Connectivity Program.

Senator for SA, Andrew McLachlan CSC, welcomed the announcement and said that providing better connectivity and increased data will be of incredible benefit to Islanders.

"As we saw during the devastating Black Summer Bushfires, reliable communications are also critical to keeping people safe and providing timely information that protects properties," he said.

Meanwhile, technicians from fixed-wireless internet provider Swoop have started adding infrastructure around KI to boost connectivity.

Technicians were spotted at the Reeves Point relay tower at Kingscote last week, adding some infrastructure that will send Swoop's fixed WiFi service in the direction of Birchmore.

It's one of the 11 listed improvements scheduled under a recent program announced by Swoop and the KI Council.

See: Expansion of fixed wireless internet service on KI

This is a Local Economic Recovery (LER) project, supported under the federal government's National Bushfire Recovery Fund and co-funded by state government contributions.

The Swoop fixed-wireless expansion is a response to an inter-government review, which found that the lack of resilient critical infrastructure hampered bushfire response efforts.

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