Guide · Coverage
Comparing mobile coverage in Australia, without the marketing.
Every carrier publishes a coverage map, every map says the carrier is excellent, and none of them will tell you what happens at your kitchen table. Here is how to compare them properly, what the maps leave out, and where to check the official version for each network.
Check the map at your address, not at the country
National coverage claims tell you almost nothing about one house. What matters is the handful of places you actually use a phone: home, work, the school run, the road to your parents.
Open each official map below and check the same three or four addresses on all of them. Coverage maps are predictions from tower data, not measurements, so treat a marginal result as marginal. Where two carriers both claim you are covered and one of them is known to be poor locally, the local knowledge wins.
The official maps
| Provider | Network | Check coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Telstra | Telstra | Official coverage map |
| Optus | Optus | Official coverage map |
| Vodafone (TPG) | TPG/Vodafone | Official coverage map |
| nbn (fixed + wireless) | nbn | Official coverage map |
We link to each carrier's own map rather than redrawing it here, because their map is the one they will be held to if you complain.
Three things the maps will not tell you
A reseller may not get the whole network. Cheaper brands run on the big three networks, but the footprint they are sold can be smaller than the network owner's own retail coverage, and some extended range cells are excluded. Always check the map on the site of the brand you are actually buying from.
Bars are not throughput. Signal strength says a tower is reachable. It says nothing about whether that tower is congested at 7pm, or whether the link behind it has failed. A full-bars phone that cannot load a page is usually a network problem, not a coverage problem.
Coverage says nothing about reliability. A map shows where service should exist on a good day. It does not show how often that service fell over. For that you want the outage record: our cross-carrier outage register lists the major and significant outages carriers have had to publish since March 2026, with durations and causes.
A practical way to choose
Check all three maps at your real addresses. Ask two neighbours what they use and whether it works, because that is real measurement and the map is a model. If you can, test before you commit: a cheap prepaid SIM on the network you are considering will tell you more in a week than any map will.
If you are moving a business rather than a phone, the question changes. Coverage is the least of it. What matters is what happens when it breaks, how quickly you get a straight answer, and whether the contract gives you anything when it does. That is where most of the money is lost, and it is where we usually find it.
Questions people ask
Which mobile network has the best coverage in Australia?
Telstra covers the largest land area, Optus is competitive across most populated regions and TPG concentrates on cities and major centres. That national picture is close to useless for one decision though, because you do not live nationally. Check all three official maps at your own address, your work address and anywhere you regularly lose signal.
Do cheaper providers get the same coverage as the big three?
They use the same towers but not always the same footprint. A reseller may be sold a smaller coverage area than the network owner's own retail brand, and may not include every extended-range cell. Check the reseller's own map, not the network owner's, before you assume they match.
Why does my phone show bars but nothing loads?
Bars show the strength of the signal reaching your phone, not whether the tower behind it can carry your traffic. A congested tower, a backhaul fault or an outage upstream all leave the bars looking healthy. That is why an outage record is often more useful than a coverage map when you are trying to work out what went wrong.
On the wrong network, or just the wrong plan?
Plenty of businesses switch carrier when the real problem was the plan, the contract or a fleet of services nobody has looked at in three years. We audit the bill first, then tell you whether moving is worth it.