Telstra has won a government tender to expand its CDMA coverage in Australian rural communities.
Once the expansion is complete Telstra's CDMA footprint will cover an additional 132 towns, bringing an estimated minimum of 66,000 new potential customers for the digital network within its reach.
"This announcement gives Telstra Country Wide the opportunity to further pursue one of its key objectives in regional Australia - the extension of quality mobile phone coverage," Telstra Country Wide group managing director, Doug Campbell, said.
Of the 132 rural sites covered by the tender, 22 have no existing form of mobile coverage: six in New South Wales; nine in the Northern Territory; five in Queensland; and one in each of the states of Victoria and Western Australia.
It's evident that some towns the Federal Government has promised to provide network coverage to will still be off the air after the expansion. According to Telstra, those towns will be covered through other government initiatives, such as Networking the Nation.
Meanwhile, it appears that the government still hasn't found a solution to extend mobile network coverage for Australians living in extreme remote communities. According to Telstra, the government is still investigating solutions to extend coverage to what it calls the -high-cost" towns of Galiwinku, Maningrida, Milingimbi, and Port Keats.
When the expansion project is complete, at the end of 2003, Telstra's CDMA network will be larger than all existing digital mobile networks operating in Australian states and territories combined.
