Telstra’s 4G population coverage hits 99%

Australia’s Telstra has revealed that its 4G network now covers 99% of the nation’s geographically dispersed population.

Following upgrades in regional areas of Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, the company’s 4G network now offers coverage across more than 1.4 million square kilometers, Telstra COO Robyn Denholm said in a blog post.

Telstra is meanwhile upgrading its transmission network to help meet projected traffic demand. Denholm said only 20% of the projected capacity Telstra will require by 2020 existed at the start of the year.

To achieve this Telstra is deploying optical transport technology across its transmission network, starting with an upgrade to the cable connecting the island state of Tasmania to the mainland across the Bass Strait. The upgrade will increase the capacity on each of the two cables from 400Gbps to 1Tbps.

“Importantly, the next generation optical transport technology offers huge upside for supporting growth. With future system deployments we anticipate we can scale up to 100Tbps or more,” Denholm said.

“We will now be progressively upgrading our optical transport capability around Australia, with Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia the next in line to benefit from from inter-capital upgrades.”

Finally, Telstra has activated LTE Cat M1 across its 4GX (LTE-Advanced) network footprint, and plans to deploy range extension capability that will take the footprint of the IoT network to more than 3 million square kilometers.

The company has also commenced testing of software that supports NB-IoT and expects to introduce this capability later this year.