Telstra announces 75 per cent coverage in major 5G rollout milestone
Three-quarters of all Australians now can now access Telstra 5G where they live, and Telstra’s 4G network now covers more than two million square kilometres of the Australian continent.
Telstra Group Executive Networks & IT Nikos Katinakis today announced Telstra had achieved a goal, set last year, to roll out Telstra 5G to 75 per cent of Australians by the end of June 2021.
“One of our priorities over the last year was bringing Telstra 5G to as many people as possible and this major milestone means that now three-quarters of Australians live where there is Telstra 5G,” Mr Katinakis said.
In the last six months alone, Telstra has switched on 5G services in selected areas of more than 100 regional towns and cities including Echuca-Moama, Castlemaine, Port Douglas, Yass, Murray Bridge, Devonport, and Esperance taking the total to more than 200 towns and cities nationally.
“We’ve extended Telstra 5G well beyond the inner cities to our suburbs, regional centres and rural areas. We have almost three times the number of 5G sites as our nearest competition and nearly twice the amount of people covered.”
“While our competitors have largely been ignoring regional Australia, at least as far as 5G is concerned, we’ve been busy building a Telstra 5G network more regional Australians are using each and every day.”
“We now have more than 1.5 million 5G devices live on our network and we’re adding thousands more every week as we continue switching on more 5G sites across the country.”
While Telstra’s 5G roll out continues at pace, Telstra has also been busy expanding its 4G network, which now covers more than two million square kilometres and reaches 99.4% of the population. This coverage will continue to grow over the next few years to match Telstra’s current 3G footprint at 2.5 million square kilometres and 99.5% population reach.
“Telstra’s 4G network will continue to play a crucial role in the future, which is why we’ve continued expanding our 4G footprint to cover more than two million square kilometres of Australia.”
“Telstra has the most expansive 4G and 5G coverage in Australia and we lead the competition by a country mile.”
Alongside the roll out, Telstra, in partnership with Ericsson, has been improving 5G services with the deployment of new technologies.
“We’ve switched on Telstra 5G on low band 850MHz and our carrier aggregation technology means better connectivity for our customers on the fringe of 5G coverage areas and even greater in-building coverage.”
Telstra recently invested $277 million to secure 1000MHz of mmWave 26GHz spectrum and already has around 50 sites live and in use in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Goulburn.
“We see mmWave playing a critical role in the future not only as demand for data continues to grow but also as an enabler for new enterprise and consumer use cases. Low band spectrum is still extremely important, especially in regional and remote Australia, but mmWave will be the key to growing capacity and depth of coverage in our larger cities and towns”.
Telstra’s also leading the way in the development of 5G Standalone (SA) after enabling it in our Core network in May 2020.
“In the next few months, we’ll be starting customer trials to explore the role 5G Standalone can play in real-time business applications.”
“Standalone is going to become a much bigger talking point and, over the next 12 months, the real value will be what it enables for the underlying network and enterprise applications. Watch this space.”
Telstra’s 5G announcements come on top of its recent 5G Connected Bike Helmet prototype which showcases the incredible capabilities and power of 5G connectivity in a real-world situation.
“We’ve accomplished so much in the last 12 months and the most exciting part of being at the forefront of this technology at Telstra is seeing just how much there is to come from 5G.”
Telstra Media contact:
Matt Smithson (Media Manager - VIC/TAS)
E: media@team.telstra.com
Media ref: 056/2021