Fed: Telstra defends CDMA rollout

AAP General News (Australia)
02-10-2000
Fed: Telstra defends CDMA rollout

CANBERRA, Feb 10 AAP - Telstra will decide within weeks whether it can bring forward
the rollout of its new CDMA mobile phone network to eliminate crossover problems with
the old analogue network.

Telstra CDMA project director Max Jennings told a Senate estimates committee that some
of the complaints about poor coverage with CDMA, particularly in rural areas, were due
to border issues.

Most analogue services ceased on January 1 but the network will not be completely closed
until the end of this year, as Telstra replaces analogue transmission with CDMA on a region-by-region
basis.

Mr Jennings said Telstra would decide in the next month whether it could fast-track
the CDMA rollout.

Some complaints about coverage, which prompted the Australian Communications Authority
(ACA) to launch an inquiry into the rollout, were due to problems with handsets or unrelated
faults, he said.

"There are also some issues with the interface between the analogue network and the
CDMA network at the boundaries of the network," Mr Jennings said.

"That was one of the reasons why we chose to try and accelerate the network to try
and remove those boundaries as quickly as possible."

The company was currently working on coverage maps to submit to the ACA, and hoped
to have them finished early next month.

While some gaps in coverage had been identified in western Queensland, near Mr Panorama
at Bathurst in New South Wales and in coastal areas in NSW and Queensland, Telstra was
working to fix them.

More than 1,200 CDMA base stations already had been rolled out, compared to 1,360 for
the analogue network.

"By September this year, or earlier depending on the rollout acceleration that we arrive
at, we will have over 1900 CDMA base stations," Mr Jennings said.

"That will result across Australia in providing service to around 200,000 Australians
who either had very poor or no analogue service previously."

AAP kmh/mfh/wjf/bwl

KEYWORD: MOBILES (CARRIED EARLIER)

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