Vic: Farmers converted on CDMA

AAP General News (Australia)
04-15-2008
Vic: Farmers converted on CDMA

EDS: Adds VFF comments



By Greg Roberts

MELBOURNE, April 15 AAP - Telstra believes its bush customers will not be worse off
with the closure of its CDMA mobile network but cannot offer a guarantee.

Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced today the telco had met the
government's requirements to close the CDMA mobile phone network from April 28.

CDMA customers must now move across to Telstra's Next G network, despite farmers' groups
and the federal opposition saying network coverage was still poor and there were problems
in swapping systems.

Telstra would work to make sure every customer was notified via SMS about the closure
of the network, Telstra Country Wide Group managing director Geoff Booth told reporters
today.

"We have our 1800 888 888 number, a full retail accreditation program and we've got
consumer coverage advocates who will go out and visit customers in their location," he
said.

"We hope they're not disadvantaged, if customers have not made the move by the closure
we will hold their numbers for 28 days so there will be an opportunity after to move across,
but the network will not be working on the 29th.

"The minister has said he agrees with us that there is equivalence and the facts are
there are 6,400 Next G base stations and less than 3,500 CDMA base stations, so it is
a bigger network and has much bigger coverage," Mr Booth said.

The $1 billion-plus Next G network signalled a new era that would give rural and regional
Australians access to the same world-class services available in Melbourne and Sydney,
he said.

The Victorian Farmers Federation had opposed closing down the network but president
Simon Ramsay said it now believed the Next G network would offer a "superior" service
to customers.

"We conducted a survey, people responded with a number of complaints about Next G including
hardware, availability, reliability and speed that we passed on to Telstra," he told AAP.

"We believe the concerns have been addressed and the network's getting better so, on
that basis, there's no reason to continue the extension of CDMA.

"Having said that we strongly urge users of the system unhappy or upset with the service
to deal directly with Telstra and ask us to mediate but don't wait for the last minute
to change over."

AAP gr/pmu/apm/cdh

KEYWORD: CDMA TELSTRA NIGHTLEAD

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