It was a simple solution to the problem of blackspots that Henty farmer Doug Meyer raised on Wednesday night with his fellow Greater Hume councillors.

"What we should be doing as a council is going to government and saying 'We need every single tower in Australia made available to every single mobile user," he said.

"That's the way we get good telephone coverage."

In Senate Estimates in April, the Department of Communications revealed that co-location between mobile network operators has occurred on just 96 out of 867 sites built under the first three rounds of the Mobile Black Spot Program.

Telstra is building more than 650 of these sites.

Vodafone made a submission to the Regional Telecommunications Review raising that Telstra's mobile coverage area had increased as a result of the Mobile Black Spot Program.

A spokeswoman told The Border Mail the program had good intentions but that it had "simply allowed Telstra, which has received around three quarters of site funding to date, to significantly increase its regional monopoly".

"Telstra is sharing very few of its sites under the program's co-location arrangements," she said.

"This means higher prices for consumers as they have no choice of provider.

"In New Zealand, the three mobile carriers and government are getting it right by working together to co-build a single shared mobile network in the most remote areas of the country.

"Together, they're building a bigger regional network than any single operator could by going it alone, and most importantly, all users can access coverage from all sites."

Vodafone and Optus have a joint venture agreement in place whereby a certain percentage of mobile infrastructure is shared or built for shared use.