Vodafone to Replace Entire Network

Vodafone Hutchison Australia is planning to replace their entire wireless network during the next 18 months. Despite the obvious connotations (that Vodafone has realised it needs a massive infrastructure overhaul to stay in the game due to its recent lawsuits and bevy of customer complaints) Vodafone maintains that this move has been in the works for over 12 months now.

This new network will afford Vodafone a valuable competitive tool, especially in light of Telstra’s recent announcement of their new LTE network, which is already under construction. Vodafone has similar aspirations for its new data network, but isn’t rushing things by any means.

While Vodafone Australia plans to have LTE operational in some areas by the end of the year, it’s more likely that in the short-term Vodafone customers will have to rely on an inferior (yet still super-fast) HSPA+ connection. Both these technologies are already heavily implemented in the US, where they receive a huge amount of popularity. The difference to consumers between HSPA+ and LTE is generally about 20Mbps, with LTE offering around 60Mbps down and HSPA+ only 42Mbps. However, despite the obvious variance in speed, this is still hugely superior to any wireless network currently available to Aussie consumers, and at max speed is even theoretically faster than an ADSL2+ landline connection.

This is certainly a good move by Vodafone, as their recent customer service problems and class-action law suit have painted a grim picture for the telco giant.

“I would expect that the recent network problems have had a negative impact on its customer base,” she [Shara Evans, Market Clarity chief executive] said. “This initiative – if implemented quickly – could help to retain unhappy customers, and longer term to acquire new customers.”

via http://delimiter.com.au

Hopefully Vodafone’s new network will be functional and reliable enough to dig it out of the hole it’s made for itself and start to offer some stiff competition against Telstra’s almost uncontended LTE domination.

Alex Angove-Plumb

Digital Content Editor

Alex Angove-Plumb is a Digital Content Editor at WhistleOut and an award-winning journalist. He's been in the tech publishing industry since 2010, putting him a few short years away from the title of Grizzled Ancient in his chosen profession. He was an original WhistleOut-er before running NBN Co's corporate blog for two years, then moving on to a lengthy stint at CHOICE. Now he's come home.

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