“5G will not operate as a standalone technology, at least not for most early use cases. So the quality of the underlying 4G service and how this integrates with 5G will determine the overall mobile experience. This will enable the rapid deployment of new 5G speeds enabled by the underlying strength of the existing network,” says Telstra’s chief operating officer Robyn Denholm.
Denholm outlined the telco’s roadmap to evolve its wireless network and offer 5G mobile services at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, saying that the rollout of 5G was underpinned by around $5 billion in mobile network investment over the three years to 30 June 2019.
She said the rollout was consistent with previous guidance, to enhance the capacity, capability and reach of Telstra’s network.
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“5G will be a critical building block in economic competitiveness for the nation, so we are planning our network rollout to give as many customers as possible access to 5G technology as soon as possible.
“It is not a case of simply flicking a switch in 2019. We are already working with vendors like Ericsson, Qualcomm and Intel today to develop the end-to-end 5G ecosystem. At the same time we are pushing the boundaries of 4G so we can continue to offer Australia’s largest and fastest mobile network and prepare for the 4G and 5G technology layers to integrate in future.
“This work is backed by our program to transform our network to handle five times the traffic and millions more connected things by upgrading our core network with next generation optical transport technology combined with the virtualisation of network functions and software defined networking.”
According to Denholm, 5G will deliver a broad range of use cases, from the Internet of Things, Smart Homes and Smart Cities to ultra-fast mobile and wireless broadband. Telstra estimates 5G could also be used by the industry to deliver wireless broadband to more than one million homes and businesses.
And, she says Telstra is planning a 5G mobile service that will be able to support both sub 6GHz and mmWave spectrum.
“In our mmWave tests, we are already achieving speeds in excess of 3 Gbps and latency of 6 milliseconds between Gold Coast and Brisbane, so we expect there to be great demand for this unparalleled combination of high speeds and low latency.”
Denholm says Telstra is also continuing to enhance its 4G service with more than 1000 small cells to be deployed to support capacity in metro areas.
Upcoming trials at the 5G Innovation Centre on the Gold Coast will include testing with Ericsson on how 4G and 5G services will be aggregated into a combined service.
