Telstra Country Wide has announced a AU$231 million investment in 2003/04 to improve services to regional areas.
Telstra Country Wide group managing director Doug Campbell revealed the package at the National Farmers Federation annual conference, saying the initiatives would deliver more accessible high speed internet, improved mobile coverage and better service delivery across Australia.
Fault reduction and improved "network resilience" were marked as objectives, as was the construction of 103 new CDMA towers in rural and remote areas.
According to Campbell, the 103 new CDMA base stations would help grow the CDMA mobile network coverage to more than 20 per cent of Australia's landmass by June 2004.
"The 103 towers will be deployed as part of a program to upgrade radio transmission equipment in rural and remote areas," he said. "Telstra... plans to provide another 250 communities with new or improved mobile coverage by the end of next financial year".
ISDN has been dug up and resuscitated as well--Telstra will offer the service at ADSL-like pricing. ISDN is suitable for rural areas because it can be accessed from up to 18 km away from an enabled exchange.
"We have listened to our customers and we will be offering an un-timed high speed Internet product called BigPond ISDN," he said. Telstra Wholesale has announced that wholesale DSL connections increased by 400 percent in less than a year, growing to 108,000.
This puts the number of Telstra's wholesale DSL customers just below that of BigPond's DSL customer base of 119,000. "The high level of competition in Australia has not only fostered growth but also delivered wider consumer choice. Telstra Wholesale is connecting people via broadband through more than 180 ISP customers across Australia," said Telstra Wholesale Managing Director Deena Shiff.
The telco giant also plans on bundling Austar Pay TV content with Telstra services in the bush, but this deal is waiting on regulatory approval.
Senator Alston said there were positive signs of other carriers moving into regional and rural Australia. "The bush is better served now than it ever has been before and that in itself is providing more opportunities for carriers such as Telstra," he said.
"We are still very committed to getting the government off Telstra's back and allowing it to make commercial decisions within the framework of all those regulatory limitations that would otherwise not apply," said Alston, but said a further sale of the government's 50.1 percent stake in the incumbent telco would be delayed until the share price improved.
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