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Country phone users win reprieve as Canberra snubs Telstra deadline
TELSTRA’s rural mobile phone network will continue for at least three more months after the Federal Government yesterday stepped in to extend its life, costing Telstra millions of dollars.
For months Telstra has been warning customers that their service would be terminated on January 28 if they did not switch to the newer Next G network.
An independent audit of the two networks’ coverage, to test whether Telstra’s promises that Next G was better were correct, was delivered to the Federal Government last week.
The audit confirmed the Next G network coverage was bigger than CDMA, but crucially found that many mobile phones Telstra was selling to rural customers were unable to connect to the network from long distances.
“This has been a tough decision,” Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said. “We’ve had … a lot of angst, a lot of people potentially adversely affected, but we believe we’ve found a way to try to solve those issues and ultimately ensure that Telstra are providing the services that they said they’d be able to provide.”
Telstra accepted the decision.
Remaining Telstra CDMA customers will still have to buy a Next G handset by the new April 28 deadline.
But Senator Conroy said those who had already switched over and could not get equivalent coverage to CDMA must be given a replacement handset by Telstra at no charge.
Less than a quarter of Telstra’s Next G handsets have the “blue tick”, which indicates their suitability for coverage in rural and regional areas.
Deutsche Bank telecommunications analyst Sameer Chopra estimated it would cost Telstra $8 million to keep CDMA operating for three more months.
Written by Jesse Hogan for The Age.
Posted 19 Jan 2008