Mobile coverage in Broken Hill is set to improve, claims Telstra as the company commissions its fourth tower in Broken Hill to expand its 4G mobile coverage in the city as the 3G network comes towards the end of its usable life.
Telstra has funded the building of the new mobile base station in Cummins St itself, rather than co-funding with the Federal government, and it should go live by the end of November.
NSW Regional General Manager for Telstra, Mike Marom, said the new 30m high mobile base station would improve Telstra’s existing 4G coverage and connectivity in the western area of Broken Hill and support the company’s existing three base stations in the city.
“Telstra understands how important access to connectivity is in regional communities is and the huge benefits and opportunities it can provide for Australians,” Mr Marom said.
“We know residents living near this new mobile site will notice a significant benefit when it goes live.
“We are in the final stages of construction and testing and barring unforeseen issues, expect the site to be on air by the end of November.”
“While this site will deliver new or improved connectivity for Telstra customers, for people on other networks it will also allow Triple Zero calls to be connected if their network has no coverage in the area.
“With Telstra shutting down its 3G mobile network in June 2024, we haven’t added any 3G antennas to this newly built site.
“No 3G sites will be decommissioned before that date, by that stage it will have had a 20-year life span.
“While it [3G] was good to make phone calls, text messages and maybe some emails it’s really not fit for purpose anymore with the increased data usage.
“At the moment data is growing at a rate of almost 50% per year and by 2025 we anticipate 75% of traffic on the network will be steaming.
“That is why we need to increase capacity on 4G and continue to roll out 5G and in Broken Hill three out of the four towers are enabled with 5G,” Mr Marom said.
Over the past seven years, Telstra says it will have invested $11 billion in its mobile network nationally, with $4 billion of this invested in the regional network.
Telstra says it has over 3200 mobile base stations in NSW, providing coverage to 99.6% of the state’s population and 11,000 nationally, providing mobile coverage to over 2.6 million square kilometres.
