Vodafone Australia delivering the fastest 4G speeds

Vodafone Australia CEO Bill Morrow said at a media briefing today that the telco is currently offering the fastest 4G speeds in Australia – but it's a title that is temporary.

"I say temporary to be really fair and open to this," he explained.

"Neither of our competitors like the fact that we can go out and say we have the 20MHz channel structure to deliver a faster 4G speed. This is an absolute race in the marketplace to say who has the fastest, the best mobile data type service."

Morrow said that it is only a temporary advantage as both Telstra and Optus work on each of their spectrum aggregation with the purchased 700MHz spectrum to boost up their speeds.

He noted that as Vodafone was last to launch a 4G network and only has 800,000 4G devices on its network at the moment, it is dealing with a smaller congestion load, allowing it to achieve these higher speeds, which should eventually level out again.

Morrow also said that its 3G speeds are faster than Optus' and about the same as Telstra's, and that Vodafone has plans to expand its 4G network across Australia by the end of this year and into the next.

Though he was not able to reveal actual data on these network claims, Morrow said the information comes from Ookla.

Winning back trust

Morrow said that the telco is expecting to lose another high number of customers by the end of the year, but mostly because it has "cleaned up the accounting".

This means no longer counting extra Vodafone SIMs that are not being used by customers, and naturally shedding some 3 Mobile customers as it migrates them over due to them using their 3 plan as a back-up or emergency SIM.

But in terms of winning back customers, despite its new network and seemingly touting some of the highest mobile speeds available in Australia, Morrow admitted gaining trust is the company's biggest challenge.

"We know we're not perfect… The objective that we have, given our history, is to earn back the trust of our customers."

Vodafone's new advertising is aiming to reflect this position towards old and prospective customers.

"No cockiness, no arrogance," he said. "We don't have the credit, the respect enough to say we are back.

"We have to just ask them to reconsider us."

• Here's out guide to the best 4G networks in Australia.