Telstra confident of rural 5G coverage

A global record of transferring 5G data between two locations 113 kilometres apart has given Telstra more confidence it can cover regional and remote areas with 5G.

A Telstra 5G base station.

Telstra says it has set a global record by transferring 5G data between two locations 113 kilometres apart. The achievement gives Telstra more confidence it can cover regional and remote areas with 5G as it continues its rollout.

5G has a shorter range than 4G which means more connection points and repeater stations are needed to propagate a 5G signal. Improvements to equipment and a longer range might reduce the severity of the task.

Overall Telstra says it has achieved 75 per cent coverage of the population on its 5G network. 5G covered more than 2700 suburbs, and more than 200 cities and towns. More than 3700 5G sites had been installed, and more than 1.5 million 5G devices were on its network.

Currently, 99.5 per cent of the population had access to 4G, and 99.5 per cent to 3G.

Remaining 3G sites were being upgraded to 4G as 3G closes down in 2024.

Telstra’s lower and medium band spectrum were being combined.“ This allows you not only to get a better signal indoors, it also allows you to spend less battery, and obviously a much better performance overall,” said Telstra group head, networks & IT Nikos Katinakis.

Telstra made several announcements about its rollout and its expanded partnership with Ericsson.

That included details of how it will use 1000MHz millimetre wave (mmWave) spectrum it acquired for $277 million from the government’s spectrum auction in April.

One use is to bolster the quality of its existing 5G offering and another is to offer a lifeline to those with a poor or non-existent NBN connection.

Mr Katinakis said the company was already installing mmWave small cells and repeaters in densely populated areas to boost hot spots in cities and towns. “We also get the ability to start serving customers with fixed wireless in the neighbourhoods where they can’t get a super good service from our NBN network.”

Telstra was about to start installing repeaters to boost the mmWave range.

Emilio Romeo, head of Ericsson ANZ, announced two programs. He said Telstra had signed up to Ericsson‘s start-up 5G program, which would introduce customers and start-ups.

He said the program “takes into account some of the feedback from consumers as to what applications they value, what they are prepared to pay for and takes them to the next level, introducing some of the start-ups to some of our customers”.

“Some of the applications and services include 360 degree live video streaming, video triggered, augmented reality, multi user shared augmented reality experience- all on 5G.”

The other program, the “On Premise 5G Industrial Wireless Platform for Enterprises”, will let Telstra offer localised 4G and 5G networks on specific sites. This was “to drive automation and digital transformation of their production and operation environments”.

“This will enable businesses to confidently transform their operations, powering Industry 4.0 transformation across multiple industries including advanced manufacturing, transport and logistics, ports, mining, energy, agriculture, and oil and gas.”

Mr Katinakis introduced 5G Standalone”, where Telstra carves up the network signal into a series of slices with different capabilities. One slice might have extremely low latency to support gaming, another slice might be for office workers working at home. Different slices could be changed at different rates, he said.

“You‘re going to hear not only us but everybody around the globe talk a lot more about 5G Standalone and 5G slicing over the next eight to 12 months,” he said.

“We are going to start doing some trials with select enterprise customers in the next quarter or two.” This capability would be supported by 5G Standalone handsets, he said.

At its media event today, Telstra demonstrated download speeds that might occur at an international airport in the future using mmWave: 7.3GB in 2 minutes, 39 seconds for one machine, and when eight machines downloaded the same files simultaneously, all times were within three minutes.

A report by Ericsson says that in Australia, about 2 million smartphone users are expected to adopt 5G this year. The report predicts 580 million 5G subscribers by the end of the year, and 3.5 billion subscribers by 2026, equivalent to 60 per cent global coverage at that time.

The report revealed that 5G had already begun to trigger new smartphone behaviours among consumers, with 5G users spending more time on cloud gaming and AR apps compared to 4G users.