VHA touts 850 MHz network rollout progress

One-third done.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia has deployed about a third of the 1500 cell sites planned for its new 3G 850 MHz network announced last year.

The telco had already turned on 350 sites when it announced the network expansion last October.

VHA said in a blog post late Friday that it added another 18 new 850 MHz sites to its network map since the beginning of March – nine in NSW, three in Queensland, five in Victoria and one in South Australia.

In addition, another 120 new towers would be "built, tested and made operational" within a fortnight, the carrier said.

The lion's share of those would be in suburbs across the Sydney metropolitan area (50 sites). Another 38 were earmarked for Victoria, 16 for South Australia, 10 for Western Australia and six for Queensland, according to a document [pdf] posted on VHA's website.

The carrier said it had also upgraded 26 existing 2G and 3G sites since the beginning of March, and would upgrade 33 more sites before month-end.

The 850 MHz 3G network was a mix of new sites and upgrades of existing base stations.

A video of new general manager of networks Peter Ryan was posted to YouTube allegedly showing a site upgrade to 850 MHz technology in progress.

"We intend to upgrade about 1500 of these sites across the country this year of which we're a third of the way through," he said.

Ryan touted the 850 MHz network as being well-suited to customers who used Apple's iPhone handset.