Next G now ready for CDMA shutdown, says Telstra

Stuart Corner
Monday, 15 October 2007 16:39

Business IT - Networking

Telstra says that its Next G network now provides better coverage than CDMA, and it has formally notified the Government setting in train the planned coverage audit by the ACMA.

The Government announced last year that Telstra would not be permitted to close the CDMA network until Next G coverage was equivalent. To determine this equivalence it instructed the ACMA to audit coverage of Telstra's CDMA network and, when Telstra indicated that Next G was ready, to carry out a similar audit of Next G coverage to confirm that this met or exceeded CDMA coverage.

Telstra now claims that Next G coverage is well ahead of CDMA. The executive director of Telstra Wireless, Mike Wright, said: "The Next G network now covers 25 percent more territory (two million square kms in total) than the published coverage of the old CDMA network, has nearly 75 percent more towers (6000 in total), offers speeds up to five times faster, and roams to more than 160 extra countries for voice and SMS."

Wright said testing and optimisation of the network by Telstra and supplier Ericsson had included "the most comprehensive network drive test in Australian telecommunications history....In just four months our drive test teams travelled more than 120,000 kilometres throughout Australia. We gathered more than 500 gigabytes of drive log files for analysis. Telstra has used this data to implement changes to antenna configurations and software parameters."

The Telstra account manager for Ericsson Australia and New Zealand, Sam Saba, said each of the drive survey teams had been equipped with Ericsson's software radio network analysis tool. "Connected to CDMA and Next G handsets, the software tool used a GPS device to capture location information and record the extensive data being transmitted between the phones and the Next G and CDMA networks for subsequent analysis. This data demonstrated the coverage and service advantage now being delivered to Telstra's customers from the city to country," Saba claimed.

If Telstra's claims for the thoroughness of its testing are true, there seems very little chance that the ACMA's much smaller scale audit will contradict the results.