The Telstra Blue Tick is the mark we give phones that have been thoroughly tested and deliver superior voice coverage in rural and regional areas. This means the devices were rigorously tested by our technicians and engineers for the best voice call performance in these regional and rural areas.
If you’re on the farm, out in the sticks or just want to make sure you have the best opportunity for coverage you can get, look for the Blue Tick from Telstra.
As of January 2021, here is the list of Blue Tick certified phones on Telstra.
This month’s additions include the new Samsung Galaxy S21 5G and Galaxy S21+ 5G devices.
In 2007, when we shut down our CDMA network, we wanted to make sure we could recommend the right handsets to our customers in regional and rural areas. The new “NextG” network operated in a different way, and as a result, we needed to know which phones were best.
Since then, we’ve tested hundreds of devices for their performance on the 3G 850MHz and 4G 700MHz bands to determine their voice call performance
The best performers are awarded a Blue Tick.
When Blue Tick first started, a crack team of Telstra technicians and engineers went bush with a range of devices to test exactly how they performed. While they were out there, they discovered a testing regimen that is still used today.
A Blue Tick comes down to how a phone performs on a voice call when you’re holding it in your hand to your ear. It’s the most common way we use a phone to make a call. For that reason, we used the same bloke’s hand to test the performance of a phone for a period of over a decade.
We now have more staffers whose hands are used for signal benchmarking. These hands work hard to run phones through a range of coverage tests to ensure you get the best coverage possible.
And now that we’ve been at this for a while, device manufacturers are working with our technicians to figure out how to maximise their coverage on networks like ours.
If you want to get every bit of coverage you can, there are a few tips to follow, straight out of our labs.
Covering the antenna in your phone can lead to reduced coverage in any area, let alone rural or regional. These tips are all about ways to not hold your phone in order to maximise coverage.
When you hold your phone, your hand doesn’t so much block the antenna. Instead, the antenna and the stuff in your body – we’re talking blood, sweat and bones – work to cancel each other out. Technicians call it a “detuning” effect that can reduce your overall coverage.
Therefore, it’s a no brainer to want to hold your phone better to get access to as much coverage as possible.
First and foremost, get yourself a Blue Tick certified device from Telstra to maximise your coverage opportunity.
Second, try using a wired or wireless headset so you don’t have to hold your device in your hand when taking a call.
And if you must hold your device, try and use as light a grip as you can to ensure your antenna can get as much exposure as possible.
Here's our guide on how to get the best coverage in rural areas.
