Post date: Nov 18, 2019 11:13:50 AM
IOTT (Indian Ocean Territory Telecom) started working with Zetel since 2016 soon after the Christmas 4G network was initially built. Over the subsequent years, IOTT have worked tirelessly through the various rounds of funding programs with federal and WA government, revisions after revisions of technical planning, submission and re-submission of the 4G project, in order to replace the already fallen-apart 2G system put in over a decade ago.
Perseverance eventually won. In 2019, IOTT and Zetel finally teamed up to design and build a Band-28 (700MHz) LTE network for the external territory, across their Western and Home Islands at Cocos. The network supported 4G data and voice services, for a range of customers including local residents, federal and local workforce, visitors, using a variety of devices. It also had to deal with some interesting challenges with NBN Satellite serving at resident homes, creating a mixture of user experience when people move between their "home Wifi" (which is Satellite) and the "Cocos 4G" network, which is a local high-speed broadband mobile network at a much lower latency (for the network communications hosted within the island) and sometimes better Internet quality too (for various data and voice/video services). Without comparing Internet oriented applications, the local communications with the Cocos 4G mobile network provided users a unique, unprecedented, pleasant experience with mobile technology.
Billing of the Cocos 4G network is provided by another partner of Zetel, another team of experts branded as Datelstream based in New Zealand.
In 2023, Shire of Cocos and Pulu Connect took over the network from IOTT, with upgraded infrastructure continuing operating the Cocos 4G network.