Case Study » The Telstra NextG™ network

When Telstra faced challenges for the launch of its NextG™ network, Unico had the specialised skills and expertise to ensure that the international roaming functionality was ready for the launch deadline. Telstra’s NextG™ is part of the global community of 3GSM operators and offers one of the world’s largest global roaming footprints.

With a very short lead time, Unico’s Brian Nicholson assembled a highly skilled team to test international roaming for voice, video and data calls with over 25 operators around the globe.

Live testing was conducted to validate the international agreements. Due to the time differences, members of Unico’s specialist team spent late nights and early mornings talking through test procedures, and viewing and discussing live test results.

Besides the technical skills, strong communication was a vital part of working with overseas counterparts and Telstra to resolve any issues that arose.

Brian Nicholson, Project Manager, believes that Unico’s deep knowledge of mobile phone communication was vital to the project’s success. “You have to understand what components are associated with a wireless call. You have to understand how a call gets from point A to point B in order to understand where any problems may occur in the process. Our depth of knowledge helped us with these nuances.”

After successfully reaching the first milestone in September 2006, Unico was awarded additional contracts for further testing into 2007.

Russell Williams, Unico’s General Manager of Strategy and Business Development explained the results. “We not only achieved the original objectives, but we were able to reach stretch targets that were introduced into scope. The team pulled out all the stops and we achieved our targets within time and budget.”

The end result enables Telstra’s NextG™ users to make voice calls in more than 140 countries and access 3G services such as video calling and high speed data in 30 countries.