Telstra claimed 5G coverage in more than 200 Australian cities and towns, and 2,700 suburbs reached 75 per cent of the population, just more than two years after launching the next-generation technology.

In a blog, group executive for networks and IT Nikos Katinakis said in the past six months it switched on 5G service in more than 100 regional cities and towns, with some 1.5 million compatible devices running on the network.

“The hard work on our 5G rollout is not done yet. Reaching more Australians will be harder from here though, with populations spread out over larger distances”, Katinakis wrote, noting each incremental percentage of the population will require proportionally more compatible sites to cover.

Recently combined spectrum in the 850Mz and 3.5GHz bands using carrier aggregation technology should boost performance indoors and at the edge of 5G coverage, Katinakis stated.

The operator deployed 5G service using the 3.6GHz band in May 2019 and started mmWave trials in February 2020.

In April, Telstra acquired 1,000MHz of 26GHz spectrum in all major cities and regional areas.