Australia's Telstra says that it has won a significant expansion of Western Australia's regional mobile phone coverage, with Telstra winning the contract to build the Regional Mobile Communication Project (RMCP).

For the State Government's investment of AU$39.2million through the Royalties for Regions program, Telstra will deliver a total return of $106million in value to Western Australia, made up of both direct capital expenditure and access rights to Telstra's infrastructure.

This will result in 113 new mobile sites to bring increased coverage to regional and remote areas of the state. Construction of the first sites is underway and it is anticipated the project will be completed over the next three years.

The project means the Telstra mobile network, will increase its geographic coverage by about 22 per cent in WA - from 430,000 km2 to more than 525,000 km2.

Telstra Regional Sales and Service Director Central West, Richard Fink, said the company was delighted to win the contract, which was open to competitive bid.

Following the completion of RMCP, more than 8300km of the state's highways will have near-continuous car-kit coverage, improving mobile phone coverage along all the major highways throughout regional, rural and remote Western Australia.