Telstra will shut down more than 160 contentious mobile infrastructure sites after the competition watchdog raised concerns the sites were registered to disrupt and prevent the rollout of 5G services by rival telco Optus.
Optus purchased $1.5 billion of low-band spectrum slots last year, including some once held, but not used by Telstra, and said Telstra then registered many sites using the slots without a clear commercial purpose. Telstra had already decommissioned 153 of the sites before the enforceable undertaking. Of the 162 left to be decommissioned, the ACCC said, “Telstra has only used a limited number of these sites, to deploy 3G services”.
“To avoid that we have filed an undertaking to deregister sites in areas Optus demonstrates it will use the spectrum in its 5G rollout,” the spokesman said.