The announcement was made at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona by Ericsson president and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Ericsson's Extended Range software has been installed and activated in selected mountaintop sites across Australia, four months after the launch of Telstra's Next G network, to support all of the 3G services.

Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said the company had displayed global leadership when it built the "turbocharged" Next G network in 10 months, and since launching Next G with HSDPA Telstra has doubled the volume of total data traffic carried on all of its wireless networks.

The Ericsson solution enables coverage up to 124 miles (200 kms) from a base station, a step up from the 50km range typically supported today, according to the company.

The software upgrade means the Next G network data capacity has now been tripled and network speeds vary from up to 1.9Mbps for uploads and 14.4Mbps for downloads.