Telstras-4G-coverage-races-to-19.5-million-Australians-with-3500th-base-station-switched-on

With Aussies set to hit the road this holiday season, Telstra customers are in the driver’s seat with Telstra’s 4G coverage now reaching 85 per cent of the Australian population.

The milestone was officially marked in Hamilton Island where the 3500th base station was switched on this week. More than 300 regional towns now have access to super fast download speeds and a more reliable mobile data experience like those in capital cities.

Max Jennings, Director Wireless Network Engineering said 1500 base stations were upgraded in the past six months in order to reach the ambitious 85 per cent target set in June when Telstra’s 4G coverage was at just 66 per cent of the Australian population.

“We aspire to have the best mobile network in the world and we continue to invest in giving our customers a superior service. Telstra now has more than four times the 4G coverage area of any other telco in Australia enabling our customers to enjoy faster more reliable speeds in more places”. said Mr Jennings.

“The additional network capacity made available with the addition of 4G will help ease the network congestion previously experienced in some regional areas as family, friends and visitors flock to their favourite holiday spots,” said Mr Jennings.

“In recent months 4G has been installed in popular beachside towns: Merimbula, Port Macquarie and Batemans Bay in NSW; Coolangatta and Noosa in Queensland; and Rye, Rosebud, Ocean Grove and Mornington in Victoria.

“The addition of 4G in these areas also helps free up capacity in for our 3G customers may also see an improvement on past experiences. It’s important to note that even with our ongoing investment, the large surge in population in some holiday areas means some customers may still experience slower than expected data at peak times.”

4G offers typical downloads speeds of between 2- 50 megabits per second to Telstra 4G customers – making streaming movies, downloading music and internet browsing much quicker when on the go.*

With this expansion of the network complete, the focus in 2014 turns to preparing the network with even faster 4G LTE-Advanced technology and deploying new spectrum to add more network capacity, speed and reliability.

“We are never done with network improvement. We will continue to work to provide our customers all over Australia with the best mobile network available,” said Mr Jennings.

* Actual customer speeds may vary, depending on a range of factors such as location, distance from the base station, local conditions, concurrent users, hardware and software configuration and download source/upload configuration.