Hot on the heels of Optus' 4G expansion announcement this week, Telstra has passed its own milestone, activating its 1,500th 4G tower.
The telco claims that the LTE network is well on the way to reaching 66 per cent population coverage by the end of June this year, by which stage it plans to have more than 2,000 towers pumping out 4G signals.
It's been a rapid expansion for Telstra's 4G network, with more than 2.1 million devices connecting to the LTE service, and coverage jumping from around 40 per cent at the start of the year to the 66 per cent Telstra hopes to achieve by the end of the financial year.
Long road ahead
It's going to require a lot of hard work for Telstra to pull off its plans though. The goal of hitting 2,000 active 4G towers within six weeks is going to challenging.
Especially when you consider that it took the telco 12 months to activate its 1,000th LTE tower, and has only activated 500 in the past 12 months.
Still, Telstra Networks Executive Director Mike Wright has claimed that the rollout is on schedule.
"The program is now running at pace and is on target – our technicians are now installing literally dozens of 4G base stations each and every week. It's great to mark the 1,500th milestone but we've committed to installing over 2000 base stations by the end of this financial year and we'll keep working to meet this target," Wright said in a statement.
