Telstra’s 5G network just hit 75% coverage

Telstra announced a new milestone in its 5G rollout yesterday, hitting 75% coverage of the Australian population. Beginning with our major cities back in 2019, Telstra has been steadily extending its 5G network to the suburbs and regional and rural areas, reporting presence in over 2,700 suburbs and more than 200 cities and towns across the country.

This key milestone has only extended Telstra's lead over Optus and Vodafone's respective 5G networks, with Group Executive for Networks & IT Nikos Katinkas telling WhistleOut's Alex Choros that Telstra now has "almost three times the number of 5G sites" as its closest competitor.

Telstra also claims to have more than 1.5 million devices live on its 5G network, which is just under 8% of its total mobile customer base.

In other news, Telstra now has access to mmWave spectrum, which allows for faster 5G speeds in busy areas that require higher capacity (think major sporting events and city centres). After announcing an investment of $277 million in 1000MHz of 26Ghz spectrum for mmWave, Telstra now has 50 mmWave sites live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Goulburn and the Gold Coast. At the moment, however, the only device capable of taking advantage of the spectrum is Telstra's 5G WiFi Pro - the rest of us will have to wait a little longer.

In addition to the 5G infrastructure rollout, Telstra also announced it had hit 99.4% 4G coverage, bringing it just 0.1 percentage point off its 99.5% 3G coverage, which will be phased out by 2024.

Telstra launched its first 5G plans back in 2019, but with so little coverage, it wasn't quite enough to convince people to jump ship solely for 5G alone. Now, with a growing collection of 5G smartphones on the market and Telstra's coverage milestone, it's becoming a far more attractive selling point. Unfortunately, access to Australia's largest 5G network doesn't come cheap - take a look at Telstra's 5G plans below.

For comparison's sake, here are all the 5G plans from Optus, Vodafone and Spintel, sorted by price.