Vodafone Australia

Company Overview

Vodafone Australia (VHA) is a mobile telecommunications company that operates the Vodafone brand in Australia. The result of a merger between Vodafone Australia and Hutchison 3G Australia, it created a mobile communications entity of nearly 7 million subscribers, A$4 billion in annual revenue and a 27 per cent market share making it Australia's third largest mobile telecommunications provider behind Telstra and Optus.

The joint venture entity is owned by Hutchison Telecommunications Australia (a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings) and by Vodafone Group plc on a 50-50 basis. It was formed on 10 June 2009, after shareholder and ACCC approval.

The company operates 3G UMTS services over B1 (2100 MHz) and B8 (900 MHz), and for a brief period also over B5 (850 MHz). Its 850 MHz spectrum was refarmed as a 5 MHz wide B5 (850 MHz) LTE service, to better compete with Telstra and Optus who launched long range B28 (700 MHz) LTE services in 2015. VHA provide 4G LTE-A services B3 (1800 MHz), and B1 (2100 MHz) in very select areas. 2C carrier aggregation of B3+B5 is available nationally.

Vodafone's LTE network was upgraded to support Massive MIMO in May 2018, following the technology being trialled since 2017.

Vodafone IoT

Vodafone Australia completed successful trials of NB-IoT in 2016, commercially launching their dedicated IoT network in October 2017 over the B8 (900 MHz) band. The NB-IoT network utilises an unused GSM channel in VHA's 8 MHz paired spectrum, with centre frequencies of 911 and 956 MHz.

Vodafone 5G

Vodafone ran the first live public 5G trial in Australia in 2016 which demonstrated data rates of 5 Gbps. In August 2018 VHA and TPG Telecom announced merger plans in order to increase competition with rival MNO's Telstra and Optus, and provide a JV framework for the November 2018 5G spectrum auction. Following the auction's conclusion, Vodafone announced in December 2018 that the VHA-TPG Telecom spectrum joint venture company, Mobile JV Pty Ltd (JV), had acquired 60 MHz of spectrum in the 3600 to 3700 MHz band nationwide.

Vodafone's 5G network rollout has been delayed by the controversial ban of Huawei, a move widely considered to be a product of the US' ongoing trade war. In January 2019 reports circulated that VHA was investigating the use of its newly acquired 5G spectrum in a fixed-wireless arrangement.