Australian operator Telstra said that its current 5G coverage footprint currently reaches over 50% of the country’s population.
Telstra’s Technology Development & Solutions Executive Channa Seneviratne said that Telstra was on track to hit its target to expand coverage to 75% of the population by mid-2021.
“Our customers have told us coverage is the most important thing when it comes to 5G, so Telstra’s 5G roll out reaching more than half of the Australian population is a huge milestone,” Seneviratne said.
“This isn’t any ordinary milestone, especially when you look back just a couple of years to see where we’ve come from and now to the huge 5G network construction project we’re getting on with. We’ve made great progress but there’s still more work to do, which is why we’ve set our teams aggressive roll out targets to bring Telstra 5G to 75% of the Australian population by the end of June this year,” the executive said.
Seneviratne said that Telstra 5G coverage now reaches selected areas of more than 100 cities and towns across Australia.
Telstra already has more than 750,000 5G devices on the network and says it is adding thousands of new 5G devices every week.
The carrier also said that it has over active 2,650 5G sites across the country.
Telstra, which had launched 5G in May 2020, is currently using its spectrum in the 3.6 GHz band to provide 5G technology across Australia. Some of the cities in which Telstra offers its 5G service are Canberra, Central Coast, Brisbane, Sidney, Cairns, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Hamilton, Melbourne and Perth.
The telco had previously announced the launch of its Telstra 5G Wi-Fi Pro broadband modem with mmWave support.
In May of 2020, Telstra upgraded its 5G radio access network (RAN) coverage footprint across Australia, connecting a cloud-native 5G Core (5GC) network to handle new 5G Standalone traffic. Telstra used equipment from Swedish vendor Ericsson for the network upgrade.
Meanwhile, rival operator Optus, controlled by Singapore telecommunications group Singtel, previously said that its 5G network had over 900 5G sites and is available to over 426,000 households across Australia.
Some of the cities where the telco currently provides 5G coverage include Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaida, Gold Coast and Perth.
In July of 2020, Optus announced it was testing 5G mmWave technology in partnership with Ericsson.
Meanwhile, TPG Telecom previously announced plans to accelerate its 5G rollout over the next months, with over 85% of the population in the country’s six largest cities expected to be served by the end of 2021.
The telco, which was formed through the merger of TPG and Vodafone Hutchison Australia, previously said that more than 1,200 sites 5G sites had entered the planning phase.
TPG Telecom said the six cities where 5G will be initially available are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
TPG Telecom had selected Nokia as its 5G equipment vendor last year and that the deployment of the 5G network began in March 2020.
