Tesltra has switched on its 3500^th 4G base station – at holiday resort Hamilton Island. “More than 300 regional towns now have access to fast download speeds and as reliable a mobile data experience as capital cities,” said Max Jennings, Telstra’s director of wireless network engineering.

He said 1500 base stations were upgraded in the past six months in order to reach the 85% target set in June, when Telstra’s 4G coverage was at 66% of the Australian population.

“We aspire to have the best mobile network in the world. Telstra now has more than four times the 4G coverage area of any other telco in Australia,” said Jennings.

“The additional network capacity made available with the addition of 4G will help ease the network congestion previously experienced in some regional areas as people flock to their favourite holiday spots.

In recent months 4G has been installed in popular beachside towns: Merimbula, Port Macquarie and Batemans Bay in NSW; Coolangatta and Noosa in Queensland; and Rye, Rosebud, Ocean Grove and Mornington in Victoria.

“The addition of 4G in these areas also helps free up capacity in for our 3G customers may also see an improvement on past experiences. It’s important to note that even with our ongoing investment, the large surge in population in some holiday areas means some customers may still experience slower than expected data at peak times.”

Jennings said 4G offers typical downloads speeds of between 2- 50 Mbps. “With this expansion of the network complete, the focus in 2014 turns to preparing the network with even faster 4G LTE-Advanced technology and deploying new spectrum to add more network capacity, speed and reliability.