Communications issues at the TECT All Terrain Park are beginning to hold back commercial developments by park users.

That's the view of park manager Bill Wheeler after the lack of cell phone coverage was brought up again at this week's Joint Governance Committee meeting between the Tauranga city and Western Bay of Plenty District councils.

TECT All Terrain Park manager Bill Wheeler.

'As we go forward with more commercial operators wanting to come on board, one of the things holding us back is lack of comms, says Bill, 'because you can't run a mountain bike hire company or whatever if you can't take bookings or use Eftpos.

'It's a big barrier to economic development too. The clubs get by, but they say they would really like to do some commercial stuff - to be able to offer people the chance to come and do our activity on a commercial basis and get tourists off the cruise ships.

'But we can't because we don't have Eftpos. We don't have the safety of having phone back up. We haven't got computers for bookings - all the things that a modern business needs are all predicated on having a 40ft tower with a couple of aerials on top.”

The all-terrain park is at the top of Pyes Pa Road, in the middle of a cell phone dead spot that Bill says extends from the Pyes Pa School to Ngongotaha.

'There's a big dead space with no cell coverage or very patchy coverage,” says Bill.

'For safety along the state highway and safety in the park, it is really important we have as wide a range of telecommunications coverage as we can.”

Park staff work with a radio network to communicate around the park, and there is a satellite phone system that runs through the internet.

And a lot of the incoming calls are from concerned family members ringing the park rangers wanting to know why people haven't returned home when they said they would.

Bill adds: 'People have an expectation now that they can use these devices, so we want to provide that for them. The highway is getting busier every day and the clubs are operating on a much bigger scale now.”

The park was working with Vodafone, which operated a community cell tower scheme, and were in the front running for a tower when Vodafone pulled the plug on the whole scheme.

'Which left us in a bit of a hole,” admits Bill.

He's now talking with Spark, and leaning on a recent comment from Prime Minister John Key stating additional money will be made available for cell towers along state highways in areas of high tourist activity.