TECT All Terrain Park's prayers for cell phone coverage may be about to be answered if they join a government scheme to increase coverage to rural areas and black spots.

The park's political master - Tauranga City Council Western BOP District Council Joint Governance Committee - is considering applying for the government's recently announced Mobile Black Spot Fund as well as the Rural Broadband Initiative.

All terrain park users want cell phone coverage.

Manager Bill Wheeler says the park, located near the top of the Pyes Pa Road, has no cell phone coverage to speak of and meets all of the Black Spot requirements.

The Mobile Black Spot fund is intended to extend coverage into black spot areas, including State Highways and popular tourist areas.

The lack of coverage at the park poses problems for users wishing to summon assistance in an emergency and is considered a bar to future commercial development of the Park.

A bid to the Vodafone Community Cell Tower Scheme failed when Vodafone stopped the scheme, and Bill is asking the joint governance committee to roll over the $250,000 set aside for the Vodafone venture into the new financial year.

He expects to have a better idea of the timing of the funding process following the first negotiations with the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. But he's expecting it will be 2016 before there's anything tangible.

'The reassuring thing is, given all the work we've done previously in identifying sites and all that sort of thing, we are quite an easy fix,” says Bill.

'It's one that they could get on with, without too much in the way of drawn-out wrangling over sites, consents - that sort of stuff.”

It makes the TECT site ‘low hanging fruit' and Bill's hoping the park could be one of the first Mobile Black Spot projects.

The continued availability of the $250,000 is insurance, says Bill.

'I'm hopeful that the whole thing will be funded by central government,” he adds.

'It meets their requirements quite explicitly for the black spots. Hopefully that money can go back into council coffers, but at the moment we need to keep that little war chest there.

'I look upon it as our contribution if we need to make one. It may tip the balance. If it does that's fantastic, but if we don't, that's even better.

'What that money does is gives us a little bit of a lever to get things underway sooner rather than later.

'What the government is looking for in terms of registration of interest is sites and partners where you can offer ease of access where consenting will be straightforward.”

The staff report on the proposal states the cell phone companies are now even less likely to enter into outside ventures, now the government has announced the black Spot and Rural Broadband funds.