Australia coverage

What the Australia numbers mean

Two numbers matter and only one of them is the one every seller quotes. The typical speed, 76 Mbps, tells you what a good moment looks like.

The tenth percentile, 20 Mbps, is the one that matters. It is the speed in the worst tenth of the day, when the cell above the station is full and everybody around you is on it too. A country with a high median and a low floor is a country that works beautifully right up until the moment you actually need it.

If the trip depends on video calls or tethering, plan around the busy figure rather than the typical one.

What happens in Australia when the network is busy

Congestion is not a fault, it is a Tuesday evening. The question is what your eSIM can do about it, and for most travel eSIMs the answer is nothing: one wholesale agreement per country, one network, and no way out except buying a second eSIM from somebody else while standing in the street.

Here, Orbislo traffic runs over Telstra and Optus. When the network you are on degrades we move you to another one, mid trip, without you asking, and tell you afterwards rather than interrupting you at the time.

Mobile operators in Australia

• Telstra: Telstra says its mobile network covers 3 million square kilometres and 99.7 percent of Australia's population, measured with a standard handset and no external antenna. Vodafone challenged the claim in 2025, and Telstra kept it after reviewing its data.
• Optus: In September 2024 the ACCC cleared a regional network sharing deal under which Optus uses TPG's spectrum and runs the network for TPG customers in regional areas home to about 17 percent of Australians. TPG hands over or closes most of its regional sites, for an initial 11 years.
• TPG Telecom: In December 2022 the ACCC refused a similar regional deal between TPG and Telstra, which would have lifted TPG's population coverage from 96 to 98.8 percent, finding it would weaken network competition over time.

Older networks in Australia

• Telstra closed its 3G network on 28 October 2024 and the same day blocked phones that could not call Triple Zero over 4G, including 3G voice phones and 4G phones that relied on 3G for emergency calls.
• TPG Telecom, which runs the Vodafone network, switched off all its 3G services on 15 December 2023. When the date was set, 3G carried less than 1 percent of its mobile data, and 3G calls moved to 4G or Wi-Fi calling.
• Telstra has found that some older phones fail to connect to the Vodafone network for Triple Zero calls when their own network is unavailable, and is contacting affected customers to update or replace them.

5G in Australia

• Telstra launched 5G in 2019 as non standalone 5G tied to 4G, which let it reach more than 500 regional cities and towns quickly. Roughly a third of its 5G footprint now also runs 5G standalone, independent of 4G.
• Telstra, Boost and JB Hi-Fi prepaid services do not have access to Telstra's 5G standalone. In areas that have only standalone 5G, phones or SIMs that support only non standalone 5G connect to 4G instead.
• Telstra had Australia's first 5G network live on the Gold Coast, in Brisbane and in Toowoomba in 2018. By early 2023 its millimetre wave 5G, a short range but very high capacity layer, was live at more than 300 sites.

Network notes for Australia

• Since 31 March 2026 Australian mobile providers have had to publish 4G and 5G coverage maps in four standard levels, good, moderate, basic and no coverage, first by 30 June 2026 and reviewed at least every three months. Signal below minus 115 dBm counts as no coverage.
• Those maps show where a phone should connect outdoors at ground level, on foot, and do not apply inside buildings or vehicles. Near the edge of a basic area a phone may still connect, but such connections are treated as incidental rather than reliable service.
• If an Australian mobile base station loses all connection to its carrier's core network and cannot carry emergency calls, the carrier must power it down until the link returns, unless its calls can still reach the emergency service through another carrier's core network.