Eldorado warning system getting closer

Geoff Drucker has developed technology to override radio frequencies for emergency warnings in mobile phone blackspots such as Eldorado.

It was trialled successfully in November and yesterday Mr Drucker demonstrated its capabilities for Telstra and member for Indi Sophie Mirabella.

“It’s fantastic and the problem is that current legislation has some technicalities that prevents this from being used,” Mrs Mirabella said.

Legislation gives radio stations a licence to broadcast in a wide area, meaning if emergency warnings were used on systems, warnings would be broadcast in areas it’s not applicable.

Mrs Mirabella said it would require only a tweaking of legislation to ensure the broadcast widths could be narrowed in emergency incidents.

“It’s utterly uncontroversial,” she said.

“It’s a no-brainer.”

Mr Drucker said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy assured the amendments would be introduced in this year’s first parliamentary sitting. This hasn’t happened.

Mr Drucker said it would be held up further by the September elections but regardless, emergency services should be able to use the technology come summer.

“They can get an exemption to use our technology in an emergency,” Mr Drucker said.

“So we’re quietly confident while we’re waiting for the legislation to be changed, there is a way around the legislation at the moment.”

A spokesman for Senator Conroy said the government welcomed trials being undertaken and the trial participants were due to report to the Australian Communications and Media Authority in September.

Mrs Mirabella said she would follow the matter up with the minister.

Mr Drucker said he hoped Eldorado would become the first area in the country to use the technology before it was rolled out into other blackspots.

He said he had conducted successful demonstrations of the technology in Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

“We’re a young company and we’ve got to start somewhere and we’d like to start at home first,” he said.