Telstra has announced the deployment of more than 50 small cell sites across Melbourne's CBD, which it said is the first phase in a national program to increase LTE capacity and speeds in high mobile network traffic areas.
Melbourne's new Telstra small cell mobile base stations extend across all directions in the inner-city area between Flinders Street, Spring Street, Spencer Street, and La Trobe Street, and have been installed on power poles, street lights, and information hubs at main intersections.
The small cells that will see the highest mobile network traffic, according to Australia's incumbent telecommunications provider, are those at the intersections of Flinders Street and St Kilda Road, Spencer Street and Collins Street, and Spencer Street and Bourke Street.
"Traffic carried on these cells is between two and three times the average CBD small cell traffic," Telstra said.
Telstra ED of Network and Infrastructure Engineering Channa Seneviratne said that by mid-2018, Telstra will activate such LTE-Advanced features as Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) across its 4G mobile network in Melbourne in order to create a Heterogeneous Network (HetNet).
"We have been using small cells to extend coverage mostly in rural and remote areas for several years; now we are deploying them in some of the busiest locations in Australia as a cost-effective way to handle the ever-growing demand for data," Seneviratne said.
As part of its preparation for 5G networks, Telstra last month said it would be installing 1,000 small cells[1] over the next three years throughout metro and regional areas across the country, with a focus on major cities including Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth.
Telstra used Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona to unveil its 5G rollout plan last