Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expecting things to roll out next year. Source: News Corp Australia

The Abbott government today opened up its bidding process for the Telstra, Vodafone and Optus to get access to the $100m of government funding to build phone towers at coverage black spots.

“We estimate this $100 million of Commonwealth funding will leverage an additional $100 million in investment from bidders and other parties including state and local government — bringing total investment to $200 million,” said Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications.

As part of the Black Spot Program, over 6000 locations have been identified, with the government hoping to have the first towers providing coverage by this time next year. 300 towers are hoped to be up by the end of the program.

“We aim to announce the locations of the base stations to be funded during the first half of 2015 — and we expect the first base stations under the program will begin to roll out in the second half of 2015,” said Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull.

As part of the bidding process, telcos will need to set out locations where they intend to build new base stations. They then need to specify how much funding they need for each station before the government decides which areas need it most.