detailed TELSTRA NextG coverage map?

I would be trying to find another map. I have no time for anything Telstra does.
Even Tomtom uses Sensis maps which part of telstra and see how you go if you try and get support from Tomtom. Absolutely useless. Try Google maps, navteq or Garmin. These maps are much better

Hi Andy.If you travel with a computer or smartphone this site is handy. Go to TV/Next G item down the right hand side. Type in nearest town and then click the double arrow icon. You can then scroll between TV or Phone towers near to you. Found it very handy plus some other good stuff on there as well. Cheers,Bob
Dreampod

Andy

Rather than a Telstra map, I have a waypoint file which has all of the Telstra towers. I used it all the time when travelling to the Kimberley last year. I put a 30km proximity zone around each waypoint to give me an idea of reception.

It worked well. Try this link to download the file. It allows all sorts of download types. But hunt down the list & you will find a wpt (Ozsiexplorer ) file.

BTW, the file has more than 10,000 waypoints, so Ozi will only load the first 10,000 waypoint.

What I do, is select a map that doesn't cover the whole country, then only load waypoints that appear on my loaded map. To do this, I go to 'LOAD', then select 'APPEND VISIBLE WAYPOINTS FROM FILE'.

If you have State maps, then these are good for creating your own smaller waypoint files. If you load each State separately, then append the visible waypoints, then save that waypoint file as a different name i.e. Tesltra-VIC.wpt etc., then you can load or append these waypoints when you are travelling. I have done this.Below you can see how many waypoints are in each separate file. (Because State are not square, there is some overlap with the waypoint files. NSW is the largest file as my NSW state map also includes nearly all of Victoria & parts of SA.)

NSW - 5401
NT - 59
QLD - 2138
SA - 1015
TAS - 214
VIC - 3153
WA - 1148

Just remember when travelling & you append one of these files to the waypoint you already have opened, not to hit the save button when you close Ozi. I have done this a few times, and then had to edit out the Telstra waypoints from my other waypoints. Its a pity Ozi doesn't let you load 2 different waypoint files (one which is editable & the other non editable).

The link to the Telstra file is here

Why bother? we've found that each year coverage gets better especially in remote areas and where there is some sort of mining going on with coverage up to 30 or 40k's from towers.
We rarely go without phone and internet coverage for more than a few days if on the move and believe me we don't spend much time in poulated areas. The only exceptions are the deserts and places like the CSR, most of the rest will have some sort of coverage at some point in the day every few days.
Unless doing some of the remote trips like the Madigan Line, the CSR, the Kimberley etc then it will be rare not to have coverage at least once a week.
Even place like Birdsville and some indigineous communities have a Next G cell these days and most large minesites will also have one. The full length of the Transcontinental railway has coverage giving phone and internet coverage up to 60k's either side, place like the northern parts of Goog's track etc all have coverage.
If you need phone and internet coverage at every camp then best to stick to large regional centres and main highways or invest in a satellite system.

On the subject of coverage for Nextg, has anyone found that external or vehicle mounted ariels make enough difference to make getting one worthwhile??


Thanks
Pop

Hi All

thanks for the pointers.

@Zeb400 It seems that the Oziexplorer File is not quite up to date. For instance Nextg towers at Marble Bar and Nullagine are not in the waypoint file.

@Dough which tower files are you referring to - are they also on the net
and updated?

Cheers
Andy

I tried the waypoint files but in the end found them next to useless because a)they are never up to date, especially in the country and b) due to terrain and directional antennas, the coverage at any tower could be any distance in any direction.

If you look here, there is a pretty accurate representation of the coverage which is kept up to date by Telstra. It uses sophisticated RF prediction software based on topological information.

With a little work I have imported areas of interest to me into my GPS map ( I use Memory Map but you could equally do it with Ozi)

First you make the map as large as possible on your screen ( Ctrl +) then use print screen to capture it. Edit out the non map parts with paint etc and then import it into Oziexplorer for claibration.

Now I have all of the high country, SA and western NSW/Qld in my GPS. Whenever I go on a trip to a new location I add a few maps.

If there is a better way I would be interested but for not that gives me an accurate moving map of the coverage.

Boobook, thanks for your hint.

I imported / calibrated parts of the Telstra coverage map into Oziexplorer. It works surprisingly well.

Cheers
Andy