The mayors of Dorset and Tasman councils gave their testimony on the state of mobile coverage at a recent hearing of the Inquiry into co-investment in multi-carrier regional mobile infrastructure.

The inquiry seeks to examine the potential for co-locating mobile infrastructure provided by different carriers to ensure equal access to services across Australia.

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Dorset mayor Greg Howard said he was in favour of carriers sharing towers, as although the bigger townships had a choice of services there were large black spots for both major carriers.

"Bridport and Scottsdale are reasonably well serviced by Telstra and Optus ... beyond that the entire municipality struggles," Cr Howard said.

"For a long time, we didn't need anyone other than Telstra because everyone was hooked on Telstra because that's all we had.

"From our point of view, the option to co-locate services on the same tower I think is a huge advantage. It seems silly to have an expensive tower piece of infrastructure sitting there and only one carrier being able to use it."

In addition to the black spots, Cr Howard said areas previously well-serviced by 3G networks encountered reduced signal strength as service providers upgraded to 4G.

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The Dorset mayor added this would not necessarily bring direct economic benefits that could be listed in a business case, but would improve other metrics like health outcomes.

This sentiment was shared by Tasman Council mayor Rod MacDonald, who claimed mobile coverage was not a luxury but a necessity.

"From the very outset I would just like to say that fixed wireless and mobile towers should be multi-purpose with shared access. End of story," he said.

"We've got many areas that are under-served or have no service ... what we really have here, is a result of market failure.

"We are in a situation where we're reliant upon those services and yet we have a large section of our community that aren't able to get online...they're increasingly isolated from their society."

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Cr MacDonald said he was aware of paramedics having problems accessing necessary information, and Tea Tree Community Association president Donna Terry said the volunteer fire brigade in her region were also impacted by black spots.

Asked by committee chairman Brian Mitchell whether encouraging shared infrastructure was the best use of taxpayer money, Ms Terry said any infrastructure at all would be a boost.

"As far as who gives us the coverage, I think we're at a point that we just want coverage," she said.

"We'd be happy with anybody supplying it."

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