Upgrades before 3G shutdown

Telstra will upgrade more than 80 per cent of its base stations in the City of Moreton Bay by the time its 3G network closes next year.

Sites at Woodford, Kippa-Ring West, Bray Park and Eatons Hill will get 5G before June 30, when Telstra says goodbye to the old network.

They will join 81 of Telstra’s 105 base stations in this City to have been upgraded over the last three years.

Remaining base stations are now in the detailed design stage to prepare for the 5G expansion by June 2025.

Telstra Regional General Manager for Southern Queensland May Boisen said there were also 10 small cells active in the City of Moreton Bay.

Telstra’s 5G network is now covering 85 per cent of the population in Australia.

To check coverage by address, visit the map on our website here.

“Over the past seven years, Telstra has invested $11 billion in our mobile network nationally, with $4 billion of this invested in our regional mobile network,” May Boisen said.

“As part of Telstra’s T25 strategy, we are working towards providing 5G coverage to approximately 95per cent of the population and move more than 80 per cent of mobile traffic to the 5G network before June 2025.”

Telstra says when 3G was launched in 2003, mobile phones were used for “calls, texting and accessing very basic information online”.

Today mobiles are used for many “data-heavy tasks” and demand for mobile data is growing by around 30 per cent each year.

Hence the network upgrades from 3G to 4G and now 5G. In the future that will expand to 6G.

Plans to close 3G started in 2019 and when the network is shut down Telstra says it will “repurpose the radio spectrum” it used to expand the capacity and reach of its 5G network.