In September 2024, we pointed out that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) decided not to oppose an agreement between Optus and TPG Telecom, the owner of Vodafone, aimed at revolutionizing mobile services in regional Australia. The most important result of this partnership has been that it allowed TPG (and by Vodafone extension) to use the regional Optus infrastructure network to extend its 4G and 5G coverage. Less than five months later, he did exactly that.
Before this partnership, the Vodafone network covered only 400,000 square kilometers, which meant that it reached 95.4% of the population. As of January 30, the Vodafone network now has coverage which reached 98.4% of the population and extended to 1,000,000 square kilometers across Australia.
In addition to giving current vodafone customers the possibility of traveling without worrying about their mobile connectivity, the biggest advantage of this increased national coverage is that it makes Vodafone a much more realistic choice for regional Australians, many of which had that the often more expensive options of suchra or optus to choose.
How does the Optus-TPG network share agreement work?
For years, Teltra offered the widest coverage in Australia and in 2022, there was in fact a similar proposal for a network sharing agreement between Teltra and TPG, although it was refused once by the ACCC and a second time after appeal by the Australian competition court.
The court said that the agreement would provide “competitive advantages and further increase the position of market for force for the mobile telecommunications markets”. One of the reasons why this Optus-TPG agreement was authorized is because, as indicated by the CEO of TPG, Inaki Berroeta, it creates “a new era of choice and competition for customers of regional Australia” .
The heart of this agreement is the creation of what is known as a multi-operator central network (MOCN) in regional Australia, which means that the two suppliers share parts of their network. And, while Vodafone / TPG and its many operators of mobile virtual networks (MVNO) should see significant advantages in terms of location where their subscribers can obtain a signal, Optus has not established a partnership with TPG just to be nice.
At the end of last year, Optus was crowned the fastest mobile network and thanks to this agreement, he obtained licenses at the TPG spectrum in the MOCN, which allows him to increase capacity, quality and The speed of its network for regional customers. When this agreement has been concluded, Optus CEO Michael Venter also said that he should see “the deployment of the 5G infrastructure which will be completed by about two years earlier than expected”.
So what are the current changes?
For the moment, the only definitive change of note is that the coverage of the Vodafone network has expanded, and it is important to remember that it is not only vodafone affected – but all the smaller MVNO telecommunications which ‘Also use, such as TPG and Iinet.
Vodafone has an entire page dedicated to its expansion of coverage, allowing you to explore your local network by state to see how it has changed. For example, in terms of footprint, the coverage in New South Wales and the law doubled, while Australia-Meridional has tripled and the cover of Vodafone in Queensland was quadrupled.
There is currently no Vodafone plan to increase the price of its plans to match its improved network and customers have nothing to do to access the widen coverage. If you are interested, you can explore the mobile plans of Vodafone to see what is best for you.
