telstra 3g rollout in place of cdma

This will benefit HTA who are partners with Telstra in 3G. The broadband capability is icing on the cake.


Telstra's 3G plan for bush mobiles
Michael Sainsburyn and Asa Wahlquist
October 19, 2005
TELSTRA could face another political storm in the bush as chief executive Sol Trujillo pushes plans to shut down the CDMA mobile network used in country areas.

Telstra - which weathered intense criticism from regional Australia when it was forced by the federal Government to replace the original analog mobile network with CDMA in 1999 - now wants to replace the CDMA network with 3G technology.

The radical mobile plan would involve Telstra eventually reducing its three networks to one, expanding its newest and more efficient 3G network into regional areas, while closing CDMA and eventually the more popular GSM network.

Although the company will ensure the 1.3million CDMA users will not experience any reduction in services, farmers are already concerned about the closure of the network.

When the CDMA network was rolled out, there were widespread complaints about a lack of coverage compared with the analog network.

3G phones - which can be used for standard voice calls but can also offer advanced services such as always-on internet and video calling - are more expensive than CDMA handsets. But industry sources expect this to change within two years.

National Farmers Federation chairman Peter Corish said the body "would be concerned if there is any rollback (of the CDMA network) without a replacement".

"In the changeover from analog there was a lot of angst and a lot of costs," he said. "We would be concerned about the cost and the timing, and the transparency of delivering the new service.

"We would say we are just at the stage when we are starting to see CDMA working effectively. There are still gaps (in coverage) but generally we are not hearing too many complaints.

"You would have to question why they would want to change. We just need to be sure rural people are not disadvantaged."

The Telstra board will consider the mobiles proposal when it meets tomorrow for the first detailed look at the results of Mr Trujillo's four-month strategic review of the business.

The meeting comes less than a week before the company's annual general meeting and as it braces for the first round of job cuts from Mr Trujillo's restructure. The first wave of redundancies are expected in the 20,000-employee technology group under chief operations officer Greg Winn. The CDMA network has added 380,000 users over the past year but it has struggled to get customers; at June 30 it had 1.3 million users, compared with 6.85 million on the other second-generation network, GSM.

The latest 3G technology would allow Telstra to use the CDMA spectrum to send phone signals over longer distances that are possible on the current 3G network, which is largely confined to the capital cities. The Australian understands Telstra has recently approached a number of major handset-makers about providing 3G handsets in the CDMA spectrum band.

An added bonus is that the next upgrade of 3G offers much faster data speeds and can be used as an alternative for the fixed-line broadband services currently provided using cable, ADSL or satellite technology.

Telstra spokesman Warwick Ponder said: "No decision has been taken to change our current services for consumers."