A History of Cellular Mobile in Australia

Zero G MTS 007 – Australia’s First Automatic Mobile System

The first automatic mobile phone system with 3 radio base stations (RBS) covering Melbourne was launched by Telecom Australia in August 1981. Sydney with 5 radio base stations was launched in November 1981 followed by Brisbane (5 RBS), Gold Coast (2 RBS) and Perth (4 RBS) in July 1984 and Adelaide (3 RBS) in September 84. The system was termed Public Automatic Mobile Phone System PAMTS but mostly referred to as MTS (Mobile Telephone System) or by the code prefix for all its telephone numbers 007.

There was a manual (operator connected) mobile telephone system prior to the MTS which was launched in 1950. This system had very limited capacity allowing hundreds of  connections and had a waiting list to connect. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the imminent launch of the system on 23rd June 1950. Subscribers to the PMG run system paid £80 p.a. to rent an AWA  (Amalgamated Wireless Australia) manufactured car radio and £51 per year for the service. This would be around $1,600 for rent and $1,000 per year service fee in today’s currency and value. The SMH article is here. There is a photo of the AWA radio equipment used here.

In modern parlance we would refer to the PAMTS system as ZeroG or pre cellular mobile. The system which initially used 120 25KHz wide duplex radio channels in the 500 MHz band (501.050 to 504.025MHZ RBS Transmit and 511.050 to 514.025MHz Mobile Transmit). The base stations used 25 watt transmitters while the mobile car mounted tranceivers used hefty 10 watt transmitters. This provided a base station range of 20 to 30 KM (subject, as it is to this day, to terain limitations).

Being pre cellular the MTS system had no provision for frequency re-use. It had call hand-off between base stations but this was slow and “call assurance tone” was injected into the call to let the parties know that the call was still in train. The system was controlled by a Mobile Control Centre MCC in each capital city. This provided control of the base stations for call set-up, termination, billing and interface to the public switched telephone network PSTN.

The equipment for MTS both network and mobile telephones was provided by NEC. The network equipment was provided under an initial contract (No 53671) let to NEC Australia for $7.3 million in June 1978. The MCC was based on NEC Japan’s ND20 telephone switch and the car mobile units and protocols replicated the system supplied by NEC to NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph) the Telecom of Japan. In this era international standards for mobile communications were non existant so developed countries developed and implemented their own protocols.

The mobile units used initially in the MTS were designed to be mounted in the boot of a car and powered by the car’s battery. The boot mounted transceiver which weighed 9 Kgm connected to a Control Unit with a telephone handset weighing 0.8 Kgm. The logic of the transceiver was managed by a then quite modern microprocessor chip an Intel 8080. The transceiver in the boot mounted unit was typically connected to a 5/8X2 wavelength 5db gain car boot mounted antenna. The alternative was a mid roof mount for the antenna. Installation standards were rigidly adhered to as only a monopoly telco could impose.

The installations were all carried out in Telecom Service Centres established in each capital city. Some would be customers – they were called subscribers then – wanted the service but could not agree to having their precious and expensive vehicles drilled to fit the standard equipment. One proud owner of a Porsche 911 cash in hand was denied connection to MTS when he refused to have a hole drilled in the middle of the roof of his car for the antenna – their being no boot on such luxury cars. Any other antenna mounting it was deemed would compromise the performance of the service. Imagine that happening today?

Later on transportable MTS units were sold. These “lugable” units were huge by modern standards and required a large integrated rechargeable battery to power them. These were none the less a god send for trades and mobile sales people as they could for the first time take their mobile phone to their place of work or into their home or office.

The MTS service was expensive. The annual network cost was $800 and the mobile units were $4,990 to buy outright or $1,000 per year to rent. The initial connection fee was $350 and typical installation cost $150. All calls were at Subscriber Trunk Dialling STD timed trunk rates with the minimum cost including that for local calls at the “F” rate of 39 cents per minute.

The MTS system was expanded ultimately to a wopping 80 base stations and with mobile units capable of 180 channels. This allowed a peak of 14,000 subscribers. With the introduction of the true cellar AMPS system in 1987 the MTS system went into decline and was shut down in 1993.

AMPS MobileNet Australia’s First Cellular System

The issue for the 007 system was that it used one radio channel for each call in each of its service areas which typically comprised and entire city. To increase capacity there needed to be a way to re-use the frequencies over and over in ever smaller coverage areas – enter the solution cellular radio.

In 1947 Bell Labs first proposed a radio design system with high capacity based on re-use of frequencies within a service area. The concept was to divide the coverage area up into small cells served by a group of available radio channels. By appropriately grouping the cells and the channels to re-use the same channels interference between the channels can be controlled. The concept which was subsequently published in a Bell System Technical journal is at the heart of modern cellular systems. Information on the concept is here Bell Labs in the USA went on to develop the concept into a practical system which they called Advanced Mobile Phone System AMPS. They documented the development of the system in the Bell System Technical Journal of January 1979 which Alcatel Lucent has posted here.

Telecom needed a higher capacity mobile system so put out a tender without mandating the technology which was to be used. By around 1985 there will no international standard mobile systems and the two most advanced national standard systems were the Nordic Mobile Telephone System NMT and the USA Advance Mobile Phone System AMPS Standard. There were other country specific systems in West Germany and France and an AMPS derivative system in UK and Italy. True international standards like GSM were a few years away. The outcome of the Telecom tender was the placing of a contract with Ericsson Australia for the supply of network equipment based on AMPS. This network was launched in Sydney with the first handheld mobile call placed by Telecom Managing Director Mel Ward to then Minister for Communications Michael Duffy on 27th February 1987. Needless to say there were many “first calls” made by technical staff before the boss if only to make sure that the “official” first call would go through without problems. Mel Ward used a Mitsubishi Walkabout handset as pictured on the page. There were just 14 base stations serving Sydney at the time at Newtown, Waverley, North Sydney, North Seaforth, Collaroy Plateau, Bilgola, Dural, Baulkham Hills, Rooty Hill, Liverpool, Bankstown, Sutherland, North Ryde and Pymble. A far cry from the nearly one thousand today. Melbourne was launched in May 1987 and AMPS was subsequently rolled out to all capital cities and country areas ultimately covering 85% of the population.

The AMPS system was a true cellular first generation 1G system with a design which supported frequency re-use and hand off of calls between cells as a mobile moved across a service area. The AMPS specifications focussed on the “air interface” the connection and control of the mobile via a base station from a mobile control centre. Many of the mobile core network functions such as roaming between service areas and signalling and network interfacing and charging were left to suppliers and/or operators to manage. Ericsson in Australia had the advantage of working very closely with Telecom and the PMG’s Department over many years in the fixed network and understood well the Australian network and signalling. As well Ericsson in co-operation with Telecom developed very advanced mobile roaming and numbering arrangements which supported full national roaming so a mobile could be called and make calls anywhere within the coverage footprint in Australia. This networking capability and national roaming would only be made available to USA mobile customers many years later.

The existing Flexcabs fixed network billing system was not suited to use with mobiles and though it could have been modified it would have been an expensive protracted process. Telecom commissioned a complete new billing and customer service support system for the new AMPS network. This was supplied by Bell Canada. An area where North America had long experience and managed very well was billing and customer service. They were then a long way ahead of Telecom in these fields.

In most respects the AMPS system functioned the same as AMPS as deployed in North America. The functions are in Wikipedia and How Stuff Works.

Radio wise the AMPS system “MobileNet” as it was branded by Telecom used the same 850 MHz band as was used in the USA. For AMPS in Australia this comprised two blocks of 20MHz (870-890MHz base station transmit 825 -845 MHz mobile transmit) whereas the USA AMPS used the “extended band” comprising two blocks of 25 MHz (869-894MHz and 824-849MHz). Telecom initially was allocated one half of the 2X20MHz AMPS band by the Federal Department of Communications. Later as the customers connected to the AMPS network grew rapidly the second half of the band was made available to Telecom. This additional spectrum in combination with continued expansion of the number of base stations and the splitting of cells to ever smaller sizes increased capacity and allowed the AMPS system to grow to support a peak of 2.45 million services by March 1996. This was a massive step up from the 14,000 services at the peak on the 007 service but less than one tenth of the mobile subscriptions today.

While in car and transportable AMPS units were marketed the hand held units provided the greatest interest. The initial handheld mobiles were huge and very expensive by modern standards. The first AMPS hand held mobiles were branded “Telecom Walkabout”. These were made locally by Mitsubishi. These units sold for $4,250. You can see an advertisement for the first AMPS phones here. Soon a diversity of mobiles were available – once “type approved” by Telecom sourced from overseas. Over time AMPS hand held mobiles came down to pocketable size and prices fell over by a factor of more than 20 as economies of scale and electronics developments impacted the market.

The AMPS system used simple FM modulated 30 KHz wide carriers and had limited protection from both eaves dropping and cloning. These nefarious activities compromised the security of most of the 1G networks around the world. It was a simple procedure to tune across the network with a readily available scanner to listen in to conversations. Some people made a point of scanning around areas such as Parliament House in Canberra where people with important things to say were inclined to say them via mobile. As well criminal groups made money by selling phones cloned with the same identity as a legitimate phone.

As part of Government’s competition in telecommunications regime the AMPS network was mandated to close by 2000. In the end it was closed 80% by midnight on 31st December 1999 and fully by September 2000.

GSM the Digital Mobile Era

In 1991 the then telecommunication industry regulator Austel’s decided to introduce competition into mobiles mandating the use of the new 2G GSM standard for the proposed three carrier competitive regime. GSM was chosen because it was well standardised and used throughout Europe, it could in its standard form support international roaming and more than two operators.

2X25 MHz of the 900 MHz band spectrum was designated for use by GSM (890-915 and 935 to 960MHz). This 900 MHz band is the most widely used band for GSM around the world except for North America. This 900 MHz spectrum was split equally between the three mobile licensed operators. Then, as now, each carrier has 2X8.3 MHz of 900 MHz spectrum. This spectrum unlike all the other public cellular mobile spectrum is held under an apparatus license. Under this arrangement the operators have access to the spectrum for an annual fee rather than the spectrum license applying to all other mobile bands. For a spectrum license, mostly purchased at auction, operators pay an upfront fee for typically 15 year access to the spectrum. They then have the right to use leave idle or on sell the right to use.

Following the first mobile spectrum auction completed in April 1998 additional GSM spectrum was purchased by all three carriers in the 1800 MHz band. This spectrum is also widely used in GSM systems in many parts of the world and has been used until recently to augment the capacity of GSM networks where the more limited 900MHz spectrum is insufficient. A table of cellular spectrum auctions and holding is here and more information on the auctions is on the ACMA web site here.

The choice of GSM for the long term was a good one as GSM has gone on to become by far the most widely used mobile standard in the world and its evolution through the 3GPP GSM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA/HSPA/LTE sees it remain the dominant mobile eco system world wide.

Austel as part of the level playing field stipulated that GSM could not be launched until 1st April 1993. Telstra had a considerable advantage of access to almost 1000 base stations and other supporting infrastructure critically including backhaul Base station transmission. Telstra was prepared to launch GSM on the first allowable date however this was delayed until 27th April due to difficulty with legal interception capability. The Telstra GSM network initially used equipment supplied by Alcatel (in Sydney and Brisbane) and Ericsson (Elsewhere). Telstra was the first operator outside Europe to join the GSM club (GSM MoU Memorandum of Understanding). The Alcatel equipment proved problematic and was capped and phased out of the network by 1999. Ericsson also supplied and built the Vodafone GSM network which launched in October 1993 while Optus chose Nokia as its network supplier and launched in May 1993.

The early days of GSM were fraught with problems which often accompany new and advanced technologies in their early days. In particular the early GSM mobile phones performed much worse than the old AMPS phones they were meant to supersede. The GSM phone’s battery life was poor, the coverage was no where near that of the AMPS system and many phones exhibited poor audio quality. Many people who “upgraded” to GSM were quick to trade back to AMPS and stayed that way until the teething problems were overcome.

Both Vodafone and Optus were given wholesale access to Telstra’s AMPS network at regulated prices as part of the Government initiative to give the new mobile competitors to Telstra a leg up.

Optus took the gift and focused on advertising AMPS simply offering customers who churned to them the same service with the same phone on the same network at a cheaper price and with an upfront cash back payment. This simple strongly marketed proposition enabled Optus to get to 34% market share in two years. This with less than one in six of their customers then on their own GSM network. Optus thus achieved a greater market share of mobile services in two years dominantly through churn on Telstra’s AMPS network than they have now 16 years later. Vodafone for un-explained reasons did not take the offered gift of AMPS resale and as a result after four years of competition they had achieved just 7.4% market share where Optus had 32%.

So tough was the selling proposition for GSM in the early days that it took more than four years after GSM launch i.e. until July 1997 for the number of customers on all three GSM networks to equal the number on the old AMPS network.

GSM started to take off in 1996 and beyond. By this time the phones had improved massively in performance, the battery life was far better and the networks at least in the populated areas much better. Adding SMS and competitive marketing with increased phone subsidies and greater retail presence started to drive the whole market and as AMPS plateaued GSM became the growth driver.

By mid 1996 the number of GSM base stations which market leader Telstra had passed the number on AMPS (1,300) a mark of the improvement in the network’s breadth and depth of coverage.

From 1996 GSM continued to grow strongly in Australia and worldwide. In 1996 there were 50 million GSM mobiles in service but by 2004 this had grown to 1 billion. In Australia GSM services grew from 1.7 million to 15.9 million over the same period.

There is a useful dot point history of GSM by the GSM Suppliers Association GSA here.

One.Tel

There was a fourth GSM network built by Lucent for OneTel in a vendor financed deal the like of which had not been seen in Australia before (or since). The deal announced in November 1999 was to build and operate a GSM 1800MHz network using spectrum which OneTel had bought cheaply in September 1998 and added to with very expensive ($523M) spectrum in March 2000.

This network launched in June 2000 was marketed as Next Generation. Despite the marketing hype it was just GSM/GPRS with some nice add on features and a smart SIM card. Prior to NextGen OnTel used Optus’ and then Telstra’s GSM network.

At the time of the Lucent deal OnTel’s market capitalisation was at its height of $Bn5.3. By the end on May 2001 the receivers were called in and the company’s bright almost exactly six year life was extinguished when it ran out of cash. See the full painful story here.

GSM has constantly evolved with new releases of the standard issued almost each year since 1995. You can see a summary of the releases here. In combination with core GSM functionality GSM has the following capabilities:

• Security of over the air voice and data with SIM card
• National and international roaming
• Short Message Service
• High speed circuit switch data HSCSD
• Fax transmission
• SIM Tool Kit information services
• Cell broadcast
• Improved voice quality EFR (Enhanced Full Rate) AMR (Advanced Multi Rate) coding
• Intelligent Network Features support for CAMEL Customised Applications for Mobile networks Enhanced Logic and yes it was designed by a committee.
• Always on packet data General Packet Radio Service GPRS and subsequently Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution EDGE
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data USSD
• Pico-cell Support
• Evolution to WCDMA/UMTS
• Picture messaging Multimedia Message Service MMS
• Data roaming

In addition new feature and billing capabilities were added outside core system updates:

• Voicemail
• Prepaid service
• Mobile number portability
• SMS based information – SIM toolkit
• WAP based content and information

GSM Mobiles

In the earliest days of GSM there were problems with the supply of mobiles which could work on the networks. Before GSM launched in Australia some European operators had fully deployed networks but could not get adequate supply of quality phones. There was a period when the operators joked that GSM actually stood for God Send Mobiles. The same problems occurred with the GSM step to GPRS when many networks were upgraded well before there were devices to work with the new data channel. Upgrade speed steps in 3G have also experienced the same problem so many operators have become wary of the “bleeding edge” of technology.

At the same time as the GSM network evolved the mobile devices particularly mobile handsets have improved in function, reduced in size and cost and increased in usage time.

The Nokia 1011 was the first mass produced GSM handheld phone launched 10th November 1992 (hence the code). To compare it look at the Nokia 111 a low cost basic GSM phone launched in September 2012 – 20 years on.

The original Nokia just did voice calls while the new phone at 7% of its cost has a colour screen, camera, MP3 player, MP4 video playback, calendar, email, voice memo, SMS, MMS, FM radio, polyphonic ring tones, vibration alert and can take a 32 GB micro SD card. The non subsidised price of the Nokia 111 is $35.

Phone	Launch	Mass gm	Vol cc	Batt mAH	Batt V	Talk Hours	Price $A	Phonebook
Nokia 1011	Nov-92	495	526	900	7.2	1.5	500	99
Nokia 111	Sep-12	77	76	800	3.7	8	35	1000
Change	20 Years	16%	14%	89%	51%	533%	7%	1010%

 

 

Short Message Service SMS

SMS was a feature of GSM from the earliest days. The first test SMS’s were sent in 1991. SMS was included in the Phase 2 GSM specification released in 1993 the same year as GSM lunched in Australia. It provided a data sending and receiving capability of 1,120 bits and is carried on the existing GSM signalling channels. This data payload set the message length of 160 characters using GSM’s standard 7 bit alphabet or 140 characters if 8 bit character coding was used – reducing to just 70 characters if two byte (16 bit) coding is needed.

To implement the SMS service, as well as the data carriage capability of GSM, a new SMS Service Centre SMSC was required to provide message store and forward, control and some billing capability. As well phones had to be compatible with SMS signalling and have the user interface via keyboard and screen to input and read the messages.

From 1993 all Nokia mobiles had SMS capability and soon after other manufacturers followed. An SMS receiving service was first introduced by Telstra in 1994. This was a substitute for then alphanumeric paging which, many years later, it killed off. By 1995 all three carriers had the capability to send and receive SMS’s to and from customers on their own networks. SMS usage growth really accelerated in April 2000 when belatedly the carriers opened the service to allow sending message between networks..

Telstra increased its annual SMS’s from 1 billion in 2002 to 12 billion by 2012. Despite competition from over the top messaging services like WhatsApp, Viber, BlackBerry Messenger, Apple iMessage and Facebook Messenger the total SMS’s sent on all networks to June 2011 according to ACMA was 36 billion up 23% from 2010. At around $0.25 per message SMS, as they say, remains a nice little earner.

A good SMS technical description by Tom Ceglarek is here and the Wiki covering the subject is here.

 

Wireless Application Protocol WAP

WAP provided a suite of protocols aimed at transmitting data more efficiently and reliably over the slow and unreliable wireless path. A WAP gateway provided conversion from the internet’s TCP and HTML to WAP protocols to be sent over the cellular network. As well phones of the time with WAP version 1 used a simplified mark-up language Wireless Mark-up Language WML while WAP 2.0 used XHTML (Extendable HTML). WML content was reasonably able to be managed by the low spec phones and small screens of the time. WAP standards were developed by the WAP Forum starting in 1997. Phones supporting WAP came to market in 1999. The more capable WAP 2.0 was released in 2002. There is more information on WAP here.

All Australian operators established WAP gateways and marketed content services delivered by WAP. These “walled garden” content sites provided a range of news, information, entertainment, email as well as ring tones and the like. Australian operators always allowed access to content outside their wall garden however at the time there was not much quality content purposed for the small screen. Normal big screen internet sites typically were between difficult and impossible to use on mobiles of the time.

WAP was better than nothing but was never kindly viewed and fell from use as phones with more processing power and faster more reliable data transmission able to use HTML browsers came onto the market.

 

iMode

DoCoMo 3G(FOMA) i-mode Phones

In Japan DoCoMo, NTT’s mobile arm, took the front running from 1999 with a system called i-mode  (before iPods, iPhones and iPads). i-mode used a compact form of HTML for mark-up. This was much more compatible with “normal” internet than WML in WAP. DoCoMo fostered a strong 3rd party content development, sale and support regime which hosted 10,000 “official” special i-mode sites accessible from the i-mode phone’s menu. Many of these were charged by the month to access by DoCoMo with 90% of the revenue going to the 3rd party content provider. There were also 100,000 “unofficial” sites which were accessed by a URL and not charged for by DoCoMo.

In November 2004 Telstra became one of only a few operators to launch i-mode. They launched with a few i-mode capable phones and content by eBay, Citibank, CNN, Fox Sports, Whereis, Flight Centre and The Weather Channel. Telstra added more content but could never replicate the range of services, interest or the usage of DoCoMo and the service was closed down in December 2007.

 

General Packet Radio Service GPRS

In 2000/01 a packet data channel  GPRS was added to all GSM networks. This “always on” data service replaced CSD Circuit Switched Data which could go to 9.6 Kbps using one GSM time slot. Optus was the first Australian operator to launch GPRS which they did in Sydney and Melbourne in September 2000, Telstra launched in March 2001.

GPRS Coding scheme	Bit Rate (kbit/s/slot)	Modulation
CS-1	9.05	GMSK
CS-2	13.4	GMSK
CS-3	15.6	GMSK
CS-4	21.4	GMSK

The GPRS packet data channel provided up to 21 Kbps per time slot under ideal radio conditions and by assigning all 8 time slots of a GSM radio channel could theoretically reach 171 Kbps on what was a shared data channel. Typically only 2,3 or 4 time slots were assigned to GPRS downlink and 1 up (Class 2,4 and 8) . As well typical radio propagation conditions forced the use of lower coding schemes.  The GPRS data channel was shared by all users in a cell resulted in typically 30 to 40 Kbps data speeds being experienced by users.

With GPRS you can maintain a voice call while holding a data session whereas with circuit switched data (CSD)  an incoming caller would receive a busy indication if you had a CSD call connection. Charging moved to per KB or MB with GPRS whereas with CSD, which held up a time slot for the length of the data session, charging was normally by the minute.

Being a relatively slow data channel and being shared by potentially a large number of users the experience of using GPRS could be poor as a single cell could be easily become  saturated. Wider faster shared data channels with EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA would later improve this situation but when it was introduced GPRS allowed a start to be made towards the mobile data revolution.  There is useful Wiki on GPRS here.

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution EDGE

EDGE  is an enhancement to the packet service GPRS on GSM. EDGE retains the normal GSM 8 time slot 200 KHz channel. By using higher level modulation 8-PSK (Phase Shift Keying) rather than GSM and GPRS’s GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying) it achieves up to 473 Kbps in 8 time slots or up to 59.2 Kbps per time slot with data round trip (latency) of 120msec. This together with signalling improvements like rate adaption and incremental redundancy mean it can shift data with three to four times the efficiency of GPRS. See the Wiki here

EDGE Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS)	Bit Rate (kbit/s/slot)	Modulation
MCS-1	8.80	GMSK
MCS-2	11.2	GMSK
MCS-3	14.8	GMSK
MCS-4	17.6	GMSK
MCS-5	22.4	8-PSK
MCS-6	29.6	8-PSK
MCS-7	44.8	8-PSK
MCS-8	54.4	8-PSK
MCS-9	59.2	8-PSK

.

There is an even faster EDGE (Evolved Edge) which can lifts data speeds to up to 1.3 Mbps (653 Mbps uplink) in theory and reduces latency to 80 msec. This Evolved EDGE would normally only be viable for an operator who had no path to WCDMA/HSPA and it has never been employed in Australia.

EDGE does not need changes to the core GSM/GPRS 3GPP network but does need a new base station transceiver to support the new coding and signalling. Many network operators did not want to spend their capital on replacing GSM transceivers to benefit from the improved EDGE data speeds efficiency particularly when WCDMA was not far away.

In Australia Telstra implemented EDGE on their GSM network as part of the upgrade which delivered NextG in 2006. Vodafone implemented EDGE outside of the capital cities as a fall back with wider coverage to their then 2100MHz WCDMA 3G network. Subsequently Vodafone has deployed 900MHz and now is adding 850MHz HSPA in these areas so EDGE for them is redundant except for customers with pre 3G phones.  Optus has not deployed EDGE.

As new devices supported 3G and 4G faster and more efficient data transmission the traffic on 2G declined to less than 1% of the total. Telstra closed it GSM/GPRS/EDGE network in December 2016 and re-farmed the spectrum onto 4G. Optus closed GSM/GPRS in August 2017.

CDMA Mobile for the Wide Open Spaces

 

The closure of AMPS mandated for 2000 was not achieved without some mighty pushback from customers especially from people living in the bush who had come to like the very long range of the simple old AMPS phones compared to the new fangled GSM replacement. A lobby group APUMP (Association for the Protection of Users of Mobile Phones) see was establish to keep the AMPS system going. The Government’s solution was to mandate (via a mobile license condition) that Telstra provide mobile coverage equivant to AMPS prior to the AMPS closure. Telstra thus had to set about tendering and building a superior coverage network to meet this Goverment mandate.

The only viable 2G technology which could match the AMPS coverage at the time was the USA CDMA IS95 standard. This had been developed in the USA as a replacement for AMPS and competed with DAMPS a digital version of AMPS. The USA like Australia had wide open spaces to cover so their networks and standards did not have the fundamental range limitation of 35 KM built into GSM at the time.

Telstra called for tenders for a CDMA network with mandated coverage performance to enable it to meet the match AMPS coverage requirement. It was generally expected that the leading CDMA equipment supplier in the world at the time USA’s Lucent would be selected however Telstra chose Canadian company Nortel for the job. Nortel was prepared to sign up unconditionally to Telstra’s requirements for network coverage performance. The network was rapidly deployed by Telstra and Nortel and Nortel set about the non trivial task of tuning the newish complex technology to meet the contacted coverage. The network used the same 850 MHz spectrum as AMPS which Telstra had licensed through spectrum auctions in April 1998.

The CDMA network was launched in September 1999 and was deemed by the Government appointed audit team to have matched the coverage of AMPS. The CDMA network was quite popular outside of the capital cities because it covered much greater areas than any of three GSM networks. CDMA grew to cover over 1.5 million square KM and 98% of the population. It had considerably broader reach than any other mobile network at the time. It reached a peak 3,000 base stations supporting 1.776 million subscriptions (about half in rural areas) in June 2006. Telstra added GSM like services to its CDMA network SMS MMS and limited international roaming. It also deployed content services marketed under the brand of Telstra Loop. Loop basically competed with Vodafone Live, Optus Zoo and Hutchison WCDMA 3 Services.

Telstra added 1XRTT (One Carrier Radio Transmission Technology) data capability to the CDMA network in Sydney and Melbourne in January 2003. It was expanded to Brisbane and Canberra in February and to all capitals by the end of 2003 and throughout regional areas by 2004. 1XRTT is the CDMA equivalent of GSM’s GPRS and is marginally faster. Both technologies were classed as 2.5G. 1xRTT provided data speeds of up to 144 Kbps and improved the voice capacity of CDMA. Telstra marketed 1xRTT phones mainly from Korean manufacturers and PC cards (PCMCIA) by Maxon.

Telstra subsequently launched CDMA EVDO (CDMA Evolution Data Only) in Major cities in November 2004. EVDO is a pure data channel requiring a new 1.25 MHz 850 MHz channel. EVDO could burst data speeds to over 1 MBPS but typically delivered 300-600 Kbps. Telstra marketed this technology as 3G against the WCDMA network launched in March 2003 by Hutchison.

Hutchison Orange CDMA

There was a second CDMA network built by Hutchison and which operated under the brand Orange in Sydney and Melbourne and surrounds between March 2000 and August 2006 . This network used 850MHz spectrum – the other half of the standard USA AMPS/CDMA band to that used by Telstra. This same spectrum had been used by Telstra in its AMPS system and was cleared when AMPS closed in 2000 and bought by Hutchison at auction in April 1998.

The Orange CDMA network market orientation was as a home phone replacement with plans allowing calls made from around a home to be charged like fixed line calls i.e. untimed. This was a good selling proposition and Hutchison hoped to get good additional revenue from the same customers using the phone away from home where they would be charged at mobile rates. The network peaked at 486,000 services in mid 2005.

In reality the areas classed as “home” were whole cell areas and in lower density areas these could be quite large. Many customers just used the phone for local calls using another phone and network for true mobile calls. In the end Hutchison was pleased to exit the home zone concept. It managed to convert 286,000 Orange CDMA customers to its 3 3G network in 2006 before the final closure of CDMA in August 2006. see August 2006 Hutchison Half Year Results.

The Telstra CDMA network was closed as part of then Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo’s plan to simplify the networks and systems and to focus on the new NextG 3G. The CDMA network was closed on 31st July 2012 after being delayed many months due to concerns about the WCDMA NextG network being able to match its coverage – shades of the closure of AMPS. Once closed the 850 MHz spectrum which CDMA ran on was again re-farmed for capacity of the, by then, rapidly growing 3G NextG WCDMA network.

WCDMA 3G

Japan the Earliest WCDMA

WCDMA had been launched first by NTT’s DoCoMo in Japan in October 2001 in Tokyo and Yokohama even before the standard 3GPP release 99 WCDMA was finalised. The service in Japan called FOMA Freedom of Multimedia Access was incompatible with subsequent WCDMA systems and performance was poor and take up slow. By 2005 DoCoMo made FOMA 3GPP standards compliant and by then phones and network worked as they should. By 2004 DoCoMo had 40 million services on its FOMA network. Today DoCoMo has 48 million FOMA and 13 million on its “Crossy” Xi LTE network launched in December 2010.

In Japan customers had a taste of diverse content served up on mobile devices such as iMode on Mova devices using 2G packet data termed DoPa from 1997. It was easier in Japan to convert customers from the slower 2G packet data devices to the 384 Kbps data of WCDMA. Video calls and 64 Kbps circuit switched video were also selling propositions in Japan.

Hutchison 3 Leads the Way

The three major mobile operators in Australia were reluctant to make the big investment in 3G early on. There was little revenue generated at the time from packet data services and revenue and growth were driven by voice and SMS. It took Hutchison to make the jump. Using the brand 3 and focusing on 3G in markets around the world (Hong Kong, UK, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Australia) Hutchison launched some of the earlier 3G WCDMA networks. In Australia Hutchison launched in Sydney and Melbourne on 15th April 2003 with a network built by Ericsson under a $830M four year contract.

The network operated on 2X15 MHz of 2100 MHz spectrum licensed by Hutchison. Initially the radio access equipment in Sydney and Brisbane was to be provided by Hutchison’s long term supplier Motorola however the Motorola WCDMA equipment was not up to the job and was rapidly replaced by Ericsson kit. The network was extended to Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and the Gold Coast by June 2003 and by the end of 2004 had some 2,000 base stations.

The performance of the network initially was not good. The coverage provided by 2100 MHz spectrum and the lower number of base stations was poor compared to the existing three 900 MHz GSM networks. The phones (Panasonic, NEC Motorola and later LG) were far better than the original FOMA units in Japan however battery life was poor. When in good coverage the faster packet data (384 Kbps and up to 200 Kbps in the real world in good coverage) coupled with 3 Services video clips and all were good selling propositions. By the end of 2004 Hutchison had 400,000 3G services for a 2% market share. Three years after launch they had managed one million services and 5% market share.

3G Network Sharing

In August 2004 Telstra and Hutchison announced that they would be sharing a 3G network. In essence this meant that Telstra would buy half of the Hutchison WCDMA radio Access RAN network $450M. Telstra would connect the joint RAN network termed 3GIS to its existing core and service network while the two would jointly fund any future expansion of the network. At the time of purchase there were 2,100 base stations on the Hutchison network. Telstra subsequently launch 3G WCDMA services on the joint network in September 2005.

The 3GIS arrangement became problematic for Telstra once Sol Trijillo lead them down the path of enlightenment and they deployed their own NextG 3G network in 850 MHz spectrum in October 2006. The 3GIS network was closed on 31st August 2010 and the customers migrated to either Telstra’s NextG or to Vodafone’s 3G network. VHA will close the 3 brand completely in August 2013.

At the same time as the Hutchison/Telstra shared network deal was announced August 2004 Vodafone and Optus announced that they would roll out a new joint WCDMA network. Like the 3GIS arrangement Vodafone and Optus would use their own core networks and services which would connect to the joint RAN. The agreement was to cover 2,000 sites in the main capitals with each paying around $420M . They estimated at the time the sharing arrangement for 2,000 sites would save each around $100M in CAPEX and $10M per annum in OPEX. Nokia was contracted to provide the MORAN Multi Operator Radio Access Network equipment and construction design. Vodafone subsequently launch 3G service on the joint network in November 2005 and Optus in December 2005.

Telstra NextG

Telstra’s king hit in 3G came with the launch on 6th October 2006 of the NextG network. This network built between November 2005 and September 2006 at a cost of $1Bn was contracted to Ericsson. The network used 850 MHz spectrum. Compared to the three existing WCDMA networks which used 2100MHz spectrum NextG had from day one wider and deeper coverage as a result. The speed with which the network was able to be deployed was assisted by building on Telstra’s existing GSM and CDMA sites and utilising the established fibre optic backhaul links which Telstra has to the vast majority of its cellular sites.

NextG was launched with HSDPA capable of peak downlink speeds of 3.6Mbps with customers experiencing between 550Kbp/s and 1.5Mbps. The network had 98.8% population coverage with a footprint of 1.9 million square Kms. At the same time Telstra announced the upgrade of the GSM/GPRS network with EDGE approximately tripling that network’s speed and data capacity. In February 2007 Telstra upgraded NextG to support 200 KM radius cells in selected areas. The previous maximum range had been around 50 KM.

Credit must go to Sol Trujillo for having the vision to see the future in wireless. Trujillo and Operations Manager Greg Winn saw the potential market for 3G data and services before the smart phone and mobile broadband revolutions. Telstra was fortunate to have enough 850 MHz spectrum to get NextG rolling. All its other 3G spectrum 2X15 MHz of 2100 MHz was vested in the 3GIS WCDMA network shared with Hutchison. The closure of the CDMA network in April 2008 was part of Greg Winn’s drive to reduce complexity and to cut the number of networks and systems in Telstra. The CDMA closure freed valuable 850 MHz spectrum which was quickly applied to NextG. The low band 850MHz spectrum did its job very well. Combined with Telstra’s greater number of base stations and high capacity backhaul the low band 850MHz spectrum gave superior performance and coverage to that of the other three 3G networks.

With just 2X10MHz of 850MHz spectrum the challenge was on to meet the ever growing load on the network. The load, driven by data demand doubling every year, kept the engineers on their toes and out of the bars. Telstra managed to add a 2100 MHz capacity layer to NextG when that spectrum was freed from the 3GIS shared Hutchison network. Telstra also used capacity increasing techniques like six sector base stations as well as implementing the speed and efficiency improvements which flowed from 3GPP standards releases as quickly as they were available. These steps in peak speeds included:

• 3.6 to 7.2 Mbps downlink (550Kbps to 3Mbps customer experience speed) network capability in February 2007 – data cards and phones were marketed from mid 2007.
• 7.2 to 14.4 Mbps network capability February 2007
• HSPA+ higher levels of modulation (to 32QAM) which in December 2008 allowed maximum speeds of 21Mbps – this was launched February 2009
• HSUPA 5.8Mbps uplink launched June 2009
• Dual Channel DC HSPA+ allowing NextG to achieve theoretical 42 Mbps on the two 2X5MHz 850MHz channels – network capability December 2009

To gain benefit from the network improvements Telstra needed to encourage particularly heavy data users to move to the newest phones and data dongles. Telstra also continued to expand the reach of NextG with new coverage base stations and cell splitting to provide additional capacity. Telstra has integrated into NextG some of the half of the 3GIS shared network sites which they obtained when the asset was split. These and other additional new sites improved NextG’s already superior depth of coverage. In June 2010 Telstra announced the connection of its 7,000th NextG base station double the number which it had on GSM in 2001.

NextG grew to covering 2.3 million square KM and  99.2% of Australia’s population with services with it as its best option peaking at 12 million in 2012. In 2021 Telstra said that 3G was carrying less than 1% of its data traffic and signalled that it would close the network down in June 2024. The spectrum in particular the 850 MHz low band has been re-farmed onto 5G and it will all be re-deployed in 2024 and added to with the additional 850 MHz spectrum which Telstra purchased in 2021. At the closedown there will be an issue which Telstra will have to manage for a small number of customers who have phones which don’t support VoLTE such as iPhone 6 and earlier as these devices rely on GSM for voice calls.

Optus 3G

Optus having launched 3G on its shared network with Vodafone in November 2005 upgraded to HSDPA 3.6 Mbps in May 2007 two months after Hutchison/Telstra 3GIS.

Optus like many mobile operators around the world was quickly caught in a tide of increased data on their relative new network. The marketing aim was to “load the wagons” and sell the capacity provided on the new 3G network. In reality the network’s capacity was rather constrained especially when unlimited data plans were offered. It took very few heavy users with no incentive to limit their mobile data usage to fully load the networks. Optus was not the first or last operator to have to set about finding and reducing the numbers of these very heavy users on their network and removing the unlimited data plans which attracted them.

Cell breathing which is fundamental to CDMA systems and causes a cell’s coverage to shrink when the cell becomes loaded. This cell shrinkage combined with the lesser range and depth of coverage provided by the 2100 MHz spectrum in the 3G networks effected their performance even for basic voice calls.

The capacity of the base station backhaul for the earlier 3G networks was somewhat limited and not easily, cheaply or quickly upgraded.  Optus had to set about upgrading the network’s backhaul capacity.

Optus announced and set about adding 900 MHz to their 2100 MHz 3G network and expanding it to reach 96% of the population by 2010. Optus was able to clear a part of its GSM 900MHz spectrum due to reduced numbers of customers on GSM. Optus GSM customers had peaked at the end of 2006. The addition of a 900 MHz channel helped Optus to narrow the coverage gap compared to Telstra’s 850MHz NextG network.

Vodafone 3G

Vodafone, which launched its 3G service on the shared network with Optus in October 2005, experienced some of the same challenges as Optus with its 3G network. They also had a relatively thin backhaul network inherited from GSM days and they had to set about the task of upgrading this.

Vodafone’s 3G network problems became worse into 2009/10 and from 2011 was very public with routine media exposure and Vodafail web site highlighting their service issues. The majority of the complaints were about lack of coverage and dropped calls. Customer service capacity was tested and customers exited in droves. VHA customer number peaked at the end of 2010 and two years later they had 1.4 million less customers. Their market share fell from over 27% to less than 21% in the two years.

VHA is well down the track of major network recovery and service level restoration. They have deployed new radio access network equipment capable of multiband 2G, 3G and 4G supplied by Huawei. Like Optus they managed to free some 900 MHz spectrum from GSM to add a low band channel to improve coverage. More recently they have introduced two new 850 MHz channels using their 2X10MHz of 850MHz spectrum. This low band spectrum should give them markedly better depth and breadth of coverage which, if they had similar base station density, would match Telstra’s. Currently however VHA have around 2,000 or 28% less base stations than Telstra. They are adding new base stations. Bill Morrow their CEO said that their aim is to triple the number of base stations in non metropolitan areas. As well they are incorporating a proportion of their half, circa 1,200, of the sites freed up when the 3GIS Telstra/Hutchison network was decommissioned in August 2012.

In May 2012 VHA and Optus announced that they would share the cost of rolling out 500 new joint use base stations and share others giving Vodafone access to 900 additional sites once the deal is implemented.

LTE 4G

Telstra 4G

The move on NextG to introduce 4G LTE in September 2011 was somewhat motivated by the pressure of data traffic on the 3G network. Telstra launched the 4G network in the centre of the capital cities (5KM radius), airports and in 30 regional centres (3KM radius) covering 40% of the population. They continued to expand the coverage with the aim to cover 66% of the population by mid 2013.

The fortuitous availability of the 1800 MHz spectrum allowed 4G LTE to launch ahead of the 4G spectrum auctions. The 1800Mhz spectrum had always been used in the GSM network to provide capacity relief in busy cells. Due to the rapid migration of customers from GSM to 3G this 1800 MHz spectrum became free. The same 1800 MHz availability allowed both Optus and VHA to follow Telstra down this 4G LTE 1800 MHz path. With 45% of LTE devices able to support 1800MHz it has proved to be the most popular band for LTE enabling a good supply of attractive 4G devices to enter the local market.

4G Spectrum Auction

The auction for the new 4G spectrum concluded in May 2013 however the spectrum will not be available until it is cleared in the case of 2500 MHz spectrum and until analogue TV is fully turned off and the UHF TV channels are re-arranged (re-stacked) in the case of the 700MHz spectrum. The new spectrum can be used from October 2014 (2500MHz) and January 2015 (700 MHz). The winners at the 4G spectrum auction were:

 

Bidder	Spectrum secured		Total price
	700 MHz band*	2.5 GHz band*
Optus Mobile	2×10 MHz (20 MHz in total)	2×20 MHz (40 MHz in total)	$ 649,134,167
Telstra	2×20 MHz (40 MHz in total)	2×40 MHz (80 MHz in total)	$ 1,302,019,234
TPG Internet	Nil	2×10 MHz (20 MHz in total)	$13,500,000
Total spectrum sold	2×30 MHz (60 MHz in total)	2×70 MHz (140 MHz in total)	$ 1,964,653,401
Total spectrum unsold	2×15 MHz (30 MHz in total)	Nil	N/A

The 700 MHz spectrum will provide wider and deeper coverage than the 1800 MHz currently used on the Australian LTE networks. Due to the high reserve price ($M311 per 2X5MHz) set by the Minister for Communications on this spectrum the 700 MHz band sale yielded 95% of the $M1,964 for the auction. This despite the fact that largely due to Vodafone’s no show 2X15 MHz of the 700 MHz spectrum worth $M933 at the reserve price was left unsold.

While Category 3  LTE device peak speed is 100Mbps down and 50 Mbps up this is only achieved using 2X20 MHz of continuous spectrum. Telstra only has 20MHz of continuous 1800MHz spectrum in Brisbane, Adelaide and in Perth and surrounds. It can use 2X15MHz of 1800MHz for LTE in Sydney and Melbourne and most other areas. You can see more on the spectrum holding of Australian carriers here. Telstra claims that customers should experience between 2 and 40 Mbps down and between 1 and 10 Mbps up using the new network and a suitable compatible (Category 3) device. This compares to 1 to 20 Mbps down and 0.5 to 3 Mbps up for the 80% of the population covered by its HSPA+ dual channel 3G network.

Telstra did selectively add some  900MHz channels to its 4G which did add depth and breadth to the coverage as well as providing additional capacity. Once it gained access to the 700MHz band spectrum the smaller amount of 900MHz was of minimal benefit.

Telstra claimed in May 2013 that it had over 2.2 million LTE devices active on its network which then comprised 1,500 base stations. It reached 66% LTE population coverage from 2,000 base stations by June 2013 and it reported 4.1 million LTE devices and 85% coverage from 3,500 base stations by December 2013. Telstra thus had at the end of 2013 almost three times the number of 4G base stations as Optus and more than three times that of Vodafone. 

Telstra  started deployment  of LTE-A in 2014 as devices which support the standard enter the market. This allowed it to bond discontinuous spectrum lots into a single channel. 1800 and 700 MHz would initially be bonded but later the new 2500MHz  spectrum could be added. LTE advanced also extends the current LTE limit of a single channel from 20MHz to a maximum of 100MHz – should any operator be fortunate enough to have access to such a large lump of spectrum. All these changes and improvements will improve LTE network speed and improve network efficiency.

Through 2014 Telstra deployed 700 MHz LTE Advanced (they term 4GX). In 2016 Telstra introduced Voice over LTE VoLTE providing improved voice quality and capacity for those newer devices which supported the standard.

In 2018 Telstra launched Cat M1 IoT with 3M square Km of coverage and in the same year reached 2 Gbps on their network  using 4X4 MIMO 256 QAM modulation and 5X20MHz carrier aggregation.

Following the launch of 5G in May 2019 Telstra LTE services peaked at the end of 2020 at 18.5 million when their 4G network covered 99.4% of the population and 2.6 million square Km of area.

Optus 4G

Optus launched LTE in the 1800MHz band in Sydney (10KM radius from CBD) and Perth (15KM radius from CBD) using equipment supplied by Nokia Siemens Networks in July 2012. This followed extensive testing including a trial at 700MHz and trial roll-out in Newcastle in April 2012.

They deployed in Melbourne using Huawei equipment. Coverage has been extended to inner areas of Brisbane, Gold & Sunshine Coasts, Toowoomba, Adelaide, Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay.

Like Telstra Optus has 1800MHz spectrum spared from their now less loaded GSM network and a good choice of devices which will operate on 1800MHz LTE. Optus says it plans to rollout LTE to provide “on the street” coverage to 70% of the population by March 2014 which puts it almost a year behind Telstra.

Optus launched 2.3GHz TDD LTE at 13 sites in Canberra in June 2013 and has plans to extend this to 50 sites in 2013. Optus has 98 MHz of 2.3 GHz and 65 MHz of 3.4 GHz TDD spectrum as part of their $252M purchase of Vivid Wireless in February 2012.

As Optus does not have 1800 MHz spectrum in Canberra the 2.3 GHz spectrum allowed them to launch LTE there prior to the 2014 and 2015 availability of the 4G spectrum purchased in the May 2013 auction. Optus claim that speeds of between 25 and 87Mbps could be seen by its Canberra LTE customers. Optus have all 98MHz of 2.3GHz TDD spectrum to work with in Canberra and a bit less in other capitals due to Vivid Wireless WiMax service. As such they certainly can gain 4G speed bragging rights for their 4G Dual Band network.

Optus has LTE TDD USB and WiFi devices and a few mobile handsets compatible with the new network. These work on  FDD 1800MHz and TDD 2.3GHz networks which they are terming 4G Plus.

Most network equipment and mobile chip set suppliers are supporting both TDD and FDD in their LTE offerings so there should be no ongoing shortage of LTE TDD devices which will work in what is likely to be the most popular TDD LTE band the 2.3GHz band (LTE Band 40). At the end of 2013 the range of Optus 4G Plus devices was limited and the TDD LTE channel was only on around 200 base stations i.e. one sixth of Optus 4G sites which itself is only around one third of the number of 4G sites which Telstra has.

Optus is working hard to catch up to Telstra as Optus’ head of networks Vic McClelland  said in December 2013 “We’re going to take the game to Telstra big time. We will have a network that’s equivalent to Telstra in the next couple of years. We’re not there now – we’ve gone a long way to get here – and we’ve got a long way to go before we say ‘network is off the table, it’s not a differentiator’.

Optus spent $2Bn to purchase spectrum and to upgrade its LTE network in its effort to catch and match Telstra. It deployed LTE Advanced and rapidly expanded its 700 MHz LTE coverage which provided improved coverage in metropolitan areas and allow it to launch LTE in regional areas where it lacked 1800MHz spectrum. Optus has also launched LTE in 40 regional locations using its 2600MHz spectrum. Optus had 4G in all capital cities and 100 regional towns in January 2015 and provided 4G to 90% of the population by April 2015.

Following the concerted effort to match Telstra Optus has achieved population coverage of 98.5% however Telstra claim to have 2.6 M sq. Km of coverage which they say is one million sq Km more then Optus.

Vodafone 4G

Vodafone launched their 4G LTE network in June 2013 in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth , Adelaide, Newcastle and Wollongong. Vodafone was the last Australian mobile network operator to launch 4G LTE.  Vodafone’s 4G launch press release is here. Initially they soft launched the network only selectively allowing customers access but by July 2013 they allowed all users with LTE capable devices to use the network.

Vodafone has been working very hard to upgrade its network and improve performance after losing almost 1.5 million subscriptions since 2010 due to network performance and service issues. As part of this upgrade they are replacing their radio access equipment with kit from Huawei. This new equipment is 1800MHz LTE capable.

In initial testing of their LTE network in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs with 10MHz bandwidth of 1800MHz Vodafone report blistering downlink data speeds of 60 to 67 Mbps with 25 to 30 Mbps up. Of course this is with just test services on the network. They have made justifiable claims to have the fastest 4G in Australia. This is because they can use a full 20MHz LTE channel at 1800MHz at, least in metropolitan areas whereas in Sydney and Melbourne Telstra has 15MHz.  Vodafone claims that, similar to other carriers who have already launched LTE, customers can expect to see 2 to 40 Mbps speeds in the real world.

As always the data speed is principally dependent on the quality of the radio signal, the amount of contiguous LTE spectrum available, the capacity and quality of the backhaul and core network and the data demands of other users on the shared LTE channel. By the end of 2013 Vodafone had only rolled out 4G LTE onto around 1,000 of their base stations behind Optus and less than one third of Telstra at this time.

In major cities Vodafone do have the advantage of being able to deploy 20MHz of contiguous 1800 MHz spectrum compared to 15 MHz for Optus and 10MHz for Telstra in NSW and Victoria 20MHz in Perth and 15 MHz elsewhere. In September 2011 VHA announced a spectrum swap with Australasian Railway Association, which also holds licenses for 1800 MHz spectrum. This swap allowed VHA to create contiguous blocks of 1800MHz spectrum in  NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

The theoretical maximum data speed for Category 3 LTE devices with 2X2 MIMO in 20 MHz of spectrum is 102 Mbps. For Telstra with 10 MHz of spectrum also with 2X2 MIMO this maximum speed reduces to 79 Mbps. All other things being equal – which they never are – Vodafone 4G should be 20% faster than Telstra over much of its network.

While Vodafone for now can claim the fastest 4G the places you can hook up to it are, compared to Telstra and Optus, fewer and further between. This claim will be short lived as Optus and Telstra roll out their new 700MHz  LTE networks early in 2015.

Vodafone rolled out dual band LTE A using its existing 1800 MHz and re-farmed 850MHz spectrum with a focus on major metropolitan markets. It terms this network upgrade 4G+. This will give them improved depth and breadth of LTE coverage but with limited capacity.

Vodafone said in July 2014 that it planned to have 4G available to 95% of metropolitan population by the end of 2014. This would be circa 75% of total population coverage. Vodafone in November 2014 has the advantage, with use of 850/1800MHz LTE, that the vast majority of its 2 million 4G customers have devices which will work today in these bands.

Vodafone’s merger with TPG in July 2020 gave it access to the 1800 and 2600 MHz spectrum which TPG had started to deploy on a stand alone network. This TPG effort lacked any rear chance of ever being technically or commercially successful but the spectrum when added to the merged entity’s network improved its capacity. By 2021 Vodafone/TPG claimed coverage of 96% of the population. In February 2022 Vodafone/TPG and Telstra announced a network spectrum pooling and network sharing Multi-Operator Core Network (MOCN) for rural and remote areas. Subject to ACCC approval this arrangement could be a game changer for Vodafone/TPG allowing it to have a competitive coverage offering which it has always lacked.

The fixed wireless part of the NBN is using TDD LTE. The network is expected to service some 4% of NBN connections (around 500,000 premises) when it is completed in 2015. It will use around 2,300 base stations each costing between $300,000 and $400,000. The base stations are using the 2.3 and 3.4 GHz spectrum which NBN acquired from  Austar for $M120  in February 2011. This spectrum 98 MHz in 2.3GHz band and 65 MHz in 3.4 GHz band came to Austar as part of a swap with Unwired (then Vivid Wireless now owned by Optus). Basically Unwired had the spectrum in metro areas and Austar had the non metro.

The fixed wireless equipment used by NBN for this service is to be provided, built, operated and maintained by Ericsson. The up to $1.1Bn contract for this work was let in June 2011 and includes options covering 10 years. The contract also covers business support systems including service activation, management and assurance as well as network performance and capacity management. The agreement requires Ericsson to design, build, operate and maintain NBN Co’s network end-to-end, including business support systems.

NBN are offering wholesale speeds on the radio network up to 25Mbps downlink and 5 Mbps up. Their design approach should offer good speed stability – obviously not as fast or consistent as fibre (either FTTP or FTTN) but superior to true mobile wireless broadband. NBN can engineer the TDD LTE base station capacity to the known demand of the customers served by the site. The radio path can also be more controlled as the customer antenna is externally mounted and can give predictable signal strength and signal to noise performance. NBN has a lot of spectrum to work with. It is higher frequency than common mobile broadband networks so exhibits a greater radio path loss. The greater path loss can however be compensated for by the higher gain of the customer antenna and the predictable path due to the fixed external to the building mounting.

NBN has another strength in that it has access to fibre links and so it can engineer the base station backhaul capacity (the capacity of the transmission link from the base station to one of the 252 points of interconnection) to match customer demand on the base station.

By March 2013 17,000 fixed wireless customers were connected and in June 2013 there were around 80 base station completed. NBN had targeted 70,000 fixed wireless connections by the end of June 2013 in its August 2012 Corporate Plan. This seems unlikely to be achieved. It appears that the NBN is not immune from the problems of site access and approval for base station sites which beset all mobile operators. As well CEO Mike Quigley has pointed to some radio path issues which may require changed designs further slowing progress.

The NBN Fixed Wireless Factsheet is here.

5G

Telstra started 5G testing using Ericsson supplied pre standard test bed equipment in 2016 and mmWave (26GHz) in 2017.

The 5G Non Stand Alone (NSA) standards were finalised by 3GPP in 2018. Telstra launch 5G NR NSA in 10 cities with 36% population coverage in May 2019. This was facilitated by access to new 5G 3600 MHz spectrum the auction for which had been completed in December 2018. Optus launched 5G NSA in November 2019 and Vodafone on a smaller scale in March 2020.

5G services have grown as the network’s customers purchased new mobiles incorporating the technology. The take up stepped up significantly when the first 5G capable iPhone the iPhone 12 was introduced in September 2020. iPhone has around 50% share in Australia but typically lags by around 12 months in introducing new mobile technologies compared to the leading Android phones from Samsung, Google, Huawei et al. This was the case with 5G. The 5G take up was slowed to an extent by market leader Telstra’s strategy of not initially allowing access to 5G to MVNO operators and to their own customers on prepaid and lower end postpaid plans.

Unlike some previous technology steps 5G was quite smooth thanks to the ever improving standards and refined network and mobile chip and phone compatability testing. As well the 5G coverage could be introduced with the secure backup of the already established fast and wide coverage 4G Advanced networks. As well the stage one NSA version of 5G New Radio (NR) uses the signalling and control of the 4G network and can be run on the same core network.

By February 2022 Telstra reported its 5G coverage extended to 77% of the population and served 2.8 million which was 13% of its customers. Vodafone/TPG has concentrated its 5G in the large population centres and at December 2021 said that they had 1,000 of their 6,800 mobile sites equipped with 5G.

In May 2020 Telstra launched Stand Alone (SA) 5G RAN and cloud native 5G SA core network with equipment provided by Ericsson. Optus launched 5G SA in August 2022. The SA RAN and cloud native core networks will facilitate the several steps needed to deliver the full benefits of the 5G technology such as reduced latency, higher data rates & capacity, support for far higher numbers of devices, energy and cost efficiency and network slicing.