Telco company Telstra has declared it has reached “an important milestone on our roadmap to bring 5G to more Australians sooner” with the announcement it has completed testing in its low-band 5G spectrum and it is now ready for commercial use.
The low-band uses 850MHz, spectrum, currently in use for Telstra’s 3G network. However, as 3G traffic declines the telco is able to re-purpose part of the spectrum for more efficient and higher value 5G services while still maintaining 3G services in operation.
Telstra says the tests and rollout, which started last November, have added another dimension to its 5G offering with parts of the network now able to undertake a 5G data session over distances exceeding 80km.
Channa Seneviratne, Executive Technology Development and Solutions at Telstra, says, “the addition of low band 5G to our network is going to offer greater depth to our 5G coverage and help us bring 5G to some hard to reach places – another part of our drive to make 5G accessible to as many Australians as possible.”
Telstra currently has around 1200 sites activated with the new software, ready for 3rd generation 5G devices. Meanwhile, it is continuing to work with ecosystem partners to optimise this new 5G network capability in combination with new device software.
Channa Seneviratne says, “we are continuing to test and optimise 5G, work that will unlock further advanced 5G capabilities such as the aggregation of more carrier frequencies, lower latency like the ~ 5mSec we demonstrated previously and the progression of the 5G StandAlone Network which we first enabled in May 2020. We are also readying the 700MHz spectrum to add to our low band 5G.”
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