Old thread, bu thought this article may interest people, considering the amount of negative comments when way back I claimed Telstra had crap coverage compared to Optus. Don't know why people run down others whose entire life revolves around travelling the country, so here it is.
"Vodafone has called on the ACCC to investigate Telstra for "inflating" its mobile network coverage."
Telstra has admitted it changed its website after being contacted by Vodafone owner TPG but denies it has misled customers."
"Telstra's advertised claim that it has a "mobile network coverage area of 3 million square kilometres covering 99.7 per cent of the Australian population" had, until May this year, failed to state that the figure was based on consumers using an external antenna and booster."
"That million square kilometres matters … It's a huge amount, that's the size of NSW, Victoria and the ACT combined."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-19/ ... /105300124
Shirley, think you experienced a Telstra fob off which is common with large corporations and have been told be a telstra tech who have known for many decades, that many telstra towers are low capacity and coverage to save money.
Where I live, you can see the telstra tower from my house but the reception is crap and 25 years ago before Optus arrived in our area, people would drive up our road to get a telstra signal, today they still do it. On my dual sim phone at home, telstra is always one bar if there's a signal which is rare and optus 4 bars.