Australian Government To Monitor Telstra's 3G Transition

CANBERRA -(Dow Jones)- Australian telecommunications company Telstra Corp.'s transition to its planned 3G network will be monitored by the government, Communications Minister Helen Coonan said Monday.

"This is about making sure that Telstra provides Australians living in rural, regional and remote areas with adequate mobile phone coverage during the rollout of Telstra's next-generation network," Coonan said in a statement.

Melbourne-based Telstra plans to replace its CDMA mobile network with a national third-generation GSM service. Under its license conditions, the telco is obliged to maintain a digital mobile network in the sometimes sparsely-populated non-metropolitan areas of Australia on the 800MHz band.

A working group, made up of representatives from the Australian Communications & Media Authority and the Department of Communications, will examine how Telstra will replicate the quality and coverage of its existing CDMA network with 3G and the role of the ACMA in evaluating the performance of the new network.

-By Barbara Adam, Dow Jones Newswires;

61-2-6208-0901; barbara.adam@dowjones.com

-Edited by Paul Godby

(END) Dow Jones Newswires "

Posted to the site on 13th February 2006