Optus, Telstra, TPG and Vodafone spaff AU$543.5m on spectrum

Australia has scored AU$543.5m (US$391m) for part of its 1800 MHz spectrum. The The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has announced the outcome of auctions it initiated in November 2015, with the following results. Bidder Total price Optus Mobile $196 million Telstra $191 million …

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia have it so good...

"Mobile services can quickly degrade only a couple of hundred kilometres beyond Australia's big cities"

If only!

Vodafone's 4G turns to sh*t barely 200 YARDS beyond Nottingham city boundary. I'm sure many other UK cities are the same.

[marky_boi]

Re: Australia have it so good...

1800MHz will be used as an infill around the towns as 700MHz and 900MHz gets rolled out. The biggest driver will be as the phones get replaced in contract and then have access to these lower frequencies. 1800MHz will NOT be the saviour of the bush. Why do you think 850MHz is the MAIN preferred frequency for 3G in AU..... coz it goes a damn long way...

[Denarius]

Bush savior !!

given the telcos phone masts outside cities are often overloaded mere frequency allocations will have zero effect on crap slow mobile services. I also note some NSW coastal blackspots are beloved by harassed staff desperate to be left alone on holidays. Fixing these will probably not be popular :)

Noting the European governments allowing tower sharing more one wonders how long before backend infrastructure sharing starts in Oz making it vaguely economically worthwhile to supply useful non-urban data services.

Slightly off-topic, was astonished to hear business owners today in the industrial area next to Canberra complaining about lousy telco performance in connecting copper less than 10 KM from parliament House. If sites close to country's capital can't get decent commercial network what hope has any town and rural area ? This suggests proposed sale of government ICON fiber network will be a bigger fail than selling Telstra and outsourcing government IT. But then, that never stopped doctrine ridden bankers bitches in search of re-election cash, has it ?