Optus

Company Overview

Singtel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of SingTel (a company headquartered in Singapore) since 2001. The company primarily trades under the Optus brand, while maintaining several wholly owned subsidiary brands, such as Virgin Mobile Australia in the mobile telephony market, Uecomm in the network services market and Alphawest in the ICT services sector.

To provide services, Optus mostly owns and operates its own network infrastructure, and also uses the wholesale services of the National Broadband Network and Telstra. It provides services both directly to end users and also acts as a wholesaler to other service providers such as Exetel and Amaysim. Through its Optus 'Yes' brand, it provides broadband, and wireless internet services. Other wholesale services include Satellite and 4G Mobile, in fact Optus is the largest satellite wholesaler in Australia.

The company operates 3G services over B8 (900 MHz) with B1 (2100 MHz) deployed in many metropolitan areas to provide additional capacity. Optus has been rolling out its 4G LTE services over B3 (1800 MHz) since 2012, adding B7 (2600 MHz) and B28 (700 MHz) in 2014.

After acquiring Vivid Wireless in 2012 Optus secured 98 MHz of spectrum in the 2300 MHz band, which the company has since refarmed into B40 (2300 MHz) LTE. The acquisition also secured spectrum in the 3500 MHz band which it has successfully piloted B42 (3500 MHz) LTE on but remains largely unused. The company also has numerous activations of B1 (2100 MHz) and B8 (900 MHz) LTE.

Optus launched LTE-A Pro "4.5G" services in February 2017, boasting peak data rates in excess of 1 Gbps, using carrier aggregation, 256QAM modulation, and 4X4 MIMO technologies. This was extended further in September 2017 when the company deployed Massive MIMO in some areas of its live network, featuring 64T64R MIMO using technology supplied by Huawei.

In February 2017 the company also announced successful NB-IoT trials in partnership with Cisco Jasper.

Optus 5G

Optus announced its intention to launch 5G NR in early 2019 after tests demonstrated peak DL data rates in excess of 2 Gbps to residential-grade CPE over 3.5 GHz and mmWave bands. The company secured 30 to 35 MHz of 5G spectrum in the 3575 to 3700 MHz range in Australia's November 2018 auction, adding to its substantial 3.5 GHz spectrum holdings. In January 2019 Optus announced the successful pre-launch testing of a 60 MHz n78 (3500 MHz) 5G data service. Optus' 5G rollout schedule was announced in January 2019 detailing 50 live sites by March 2019, and 1200 sites to be completed by March 2020.

The company has expressed interest to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) regarding licencing of the 26 GHz band for mmWave 5G services.