Vodafone has announced it has wrapped up a three month network upgrade project involving the installation of new mobile equipment at 49 sites across Newcastle, parts of the Central Coast, and the Hunter.
The project, which began in mid-April, is part of a national network improvement initiative in response to repeated complaints from customers and industry groups about the quality of the telco’s network.
According to the company, Huawei equipment — capable of delivering 2G, 3G and, later, 4G from a single base station site — was selected for the upgrade,
“The Vodafone network equipment upgrade is the biggest single equipment replacement project to be undertaken by Vodafone since it upgraded its mobile network from 2G to 3G in 2005 and 2006,” a statement from the company reads.
“New equipment will be replaced and installed at all sites across the network over the next 18 months, with Canberra and Perth to be completed in the coming months.”
The telco claims that as a result of the upgrade all 49 sites now report lower dropped call rates and improved data connection reliability.
“Upon completion of the Ourimbah to Newcastle and Nelson Bay new equipment project, Vodafone has started planning the next phase of its network upgrade, which will extend north from Nelson Bay to Taree in the coming months,” the statement reads.
The company also recently announced it, with partner Hutchison, was joining mainland trials of the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Armidale, NSW to improve the performance of the network.
In line with its national network upgrade announcement in February, the company said improvements to the Vodafone network would continue in the area in the coming months.
The network’s first new 850MHz network sites, which seek to improve indoor mobile network coverage and provide faster data speeds, are due for installation at the end of September.
The announcement follows the launch of another customer service initiative by rival Telstra: a new website to provide up-to-date information on outages and restorations during natural disasters.
The telco has also reshuffled its entire sales and retail customer service workforce into a single division — Telstra Customer Sales and Service — and appointed Gordon Ballantyne to the newly created role of chief customer officer.
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