Politics don't come into improving regional communications, minister says

"The money that I've talked about - the $1.3 billion for improved regional telecommunications - was contained in the budget," Mr Fletcher said. "It is a commitment by government so it's locked in."

Mr Fletcher was flanked by Liberal candidate for Indi Ross Lyman in Wangaratta's King George V Memorial Garden on Wednesday to address the problems of mobile blackspots and poor internet connectivity.

Mr Fletcher said 51 base stations had been funded under the Liberal National government's mobile blackspots program, of which 44 were delivered and operational.

"When we came to government in 2013 we made a commitment to our mobile blackspots program," Mr Fletcher said.

"Labor had been in power 2007-20013. Not one dollar of public money was spent on improving regional (net) communications and regional mobile communications.

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"Since we've come to government, 1207 base stations around the country have been funded and delivered.

"Locations get nominated on the blackspot register, then the mobile network operators put forward locations drawn from that register, they are assessed using a points system which weighs up things like total amount of increased coverage, total number of homes covered, also value for money factors."

Mr Fletcher said poor internet speeds had crippled businesses who relied on effective communications.

"Around the country another 120,000 people will get fixed wireless from satellite," he said.

"It means an increase in speed. Today the top speed is 50 megabytes per second - everybody will now be able to get a speed of 100 megabytes per second, and 85 per cent up to 250 megabytes per second.

"We will also see an increase in upload speed - at the moment upload speed is 10 megabytes per second on fixed wireless - that'll increase to 20 megabytes per second.

"That's so important particularly for businesses which are using cloud-based services."

He said there were also benefits for satellite users because as more than 120,000 people could be moved from the satellite footprint to fixed wireless, and download limits on satellites could be increased.

"So if you're on satellite, over the next two years downloads are going to increase from 50 gigabytes a month today, to 90 gigabytes a month," Mr Fletcher said.

Mr Fletcher said $411 million had been allocated to a program to focus on continuous mobile coverage for 8000 kilometres of highways around Australia.

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