Vodafone’s expansion of its 3G network goes live in five major regional areas today. The move brings their overall 3G coverage to about 80% of the population. More »
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AT&T was calling me to set up an interview with their CTO, but all I could hear was garbled noise on my AT&T iPhone. “I can’t really hear you!” I shouted, as if volume would clear the channel. It’s always been like this, in my home in San Francisco.
While the howls of iPhone 3G reception issues get louder and louder, I’ve always wondered if it was the network’s fault, as some Swedish scientists and journalists have recently suggested. Maybe it’s just new AT&T customers making the bulk of the noise. From my experience, the phone isn’t blameless, but the network is a major part of the issue.
For the moment. Optus last week announced that it plans to take on Telstra in the coverage stakes, targeting 98% of the Australian population. They’re spending a whopping $315 million between now and December 2009 to build at least another 750 base stations across the country. Their target is to extend their coverage area by 400,000 square kilometres.
On top of the coverage increase, they’re also in the process of boosting their 3G networks to 7.2Mbps HSPA on the 900MHz spectrum, with plans to expand that to 42Mbps by mid 2010. Which should be the perfect speed and coverage for a 3G iPhone, don’t you think?
The full press release is below:
[Optus]
