Vodafone Taps Into TPG’s Dark Fibre For Mobile Data

Vodafone Hutchinson Australia has signed TPG Telecom as its new wholesale provider for mobile data. TPG will be providing dark fibre, which is essentially unused optic fibre infrastructure that has been rolled out, and network services to Vodafone over a 15 year period. So what does this mean for Vodafone and TPG mobile customers?

Vodafone store picture from Shutterstock

Vodafone is super excited about the deal to bring TPG’s dark fibre services to over 3000 of its mobile cell sites over the next 15 years. The company’s CEO, Inaki Berroeta, is convinced dark fibre is the future for Vodafone and the partnership with TPG “is the next step in [Vodafone’s] network evolution” that will “enhance the customer experience”.

What does this mean for Vodafone customers? According to Berroeta, the deal will bring a “higher-performing, 5G-ready network which will enable future opportunities such as virtual and augmented reality applications”. Not sure if we’ll be streaming high quality VR or AR content through a mobile data network any time soon (fixed line services, please) but it’s nice to know Vodafone’s long-term vision for this $1 billion deal.

As for TPG mobile phone plan customers, the company is shafting Optus as its mobile phone service provider in favour of Vodafone. TPG will be migrating its 320,000 mobile customers onto the Vodafone network, which could potentially impact the quality of service for existing Vodafone users, according to The Australian Financial Review.

There are no details yet on whether this agreement will impact prices for mobile plans for Vodafone customers. We’ll let you know if this changes.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments