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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Australia's incumbent telco Telstra has announced it is planning to switch off its 3G network in June 2024 and refarm the spectrum for its 5G network.
The telco said until that time, it would look to boost its 4G coverage to a "materially equivalent size and reach" compared to the 3G network. To achieve this, Telstra will look at areas serviced only by 3G and assess its product portfolio, the company said.
[...] 5G services were switched on by Telstra a year ago, with the launch covering 50 base stations.
The telco expects 5G to be a strong growth engine, CEO Andy Penn said during the company's annual retail shareholder day last month.
"ARPUs1 tend to increase, particularly in the early stages of a rollout," Penn said. "So we see that happening in 5G as well as we look forward over the next couple of years."
Penn added that with second generation 5G chips heading into devices later this year, the company expects 5G uptake to increase.
"I think what history has shown us is that, as we put these technologies in the hands of our customers, they respond very positively and it's tended to lead to improvement in revenues across the industry," he said.
[1] ARPU - Average revenue per user
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday October 10 2019, @09:14AM (4 children)
2G was inly switched off in 2017 [amaysim.com.au]
great way to ensure new sales...
many back-to-base alarms that Australians had to install thanks to the death of copper/PSTN run on 3G. I imagine many alarm companies and service technicians will happily 'upgrade' your device for you ('tampering' no doubt voids warranties and any 'insurance' related to the device.)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @10:41AM (2 children)
Isn't Australia a vast rural wasteland? Why shut down 3G?
People will die in The Bush because of this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @11:07AM
Like just about everything in Australia, 5G will kill you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10 2019, @02:10PM
That is a valid point. As we push for more bandwidth we continue to lose distance and reliability.
It's not unlike the analog television switch-off. An imperfect signal was still watchable. Now with digital it is blocky and full of short freezes.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 10 2019, @04:25PM
Arguable, but not necessarily right. The data provision in 2G was utterly terrible, completely useless (way worse than dial-up), that only really picked up with 2.5G, and only actually became practical with EDGE (or "2.75G" if you prefer).
But 3G hit the ground running, and I would say was actually perfectly practical for simple remote tasks. So will it ever become "utterly terrible, completely useless"? One could argue not. In particular in the era of "apps" which are fatter clients less reliant on high bandwith and low latency. 3G chips (that don't need to support 2G) will possibly even become as small, cheap and low power as the USB chips in use when next-next-generation alternatives were the next sliced bread, a few-cent solution that's already proven - who wouldn't want to chose that, if you know your bandwidth needs are low? So could it be that 3G will just be kept going until the towers the antennae are on rust away?
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