Australia’s Optus has expanded its 4G coverage in the Australian Capital Territory using the 700MHz band after the Australian Communications and Media Authority granted it early access to the digital dividend spectrum.

Opus said it has rolled out 20 4G sites in the capital territory, which includes Canberra, using the newly acquired 700MHz frequency. Previously, its 4G network in the area only used the 2.3GHz band.

The company is targeting covering 200 regional locations, where it has received early access licence approval, by next April and increasing its population coverage to 90 per cent of the country.

Meanwhile, Vodafone Australia said its LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) network, which it calls ‘4G+’, now covers Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. It claims to have almost 400 4G+ sites across Queensland and just over 700 sites in New South Wales.

The company uses the 850MHz and 1.8GHz bands to offer LTE-A services, which it says greatly improves indoor coverage as well as data speeds.

The operator has said it aims to cover 95 per cent of the population in urban areas by the end the year with 4G+.

Market leader Telstra announced in early September it was expanding the coverage area of its planned 4G trials on its newly-acquired 700MHz spectrum to 20 additional metropolitan and regional centres. Commercial service on the 700MHz network will start at the beginning of next year.

In early November it introduced what it calls ‘4GX’ service to customers in selected areas leveraging LTE-A carrier aggregation on its new 700MHz network and its existing 1.8GHz network to offer peak download speeds in the (very varied) region of 2-100Mb/s.