Telstra will roll out a fibre network for more than 850 McDonald’s restaurants as part of a $90 million deal with the fast food giant.
Telstra IP Telephony will also replace PSTN at the outlets, potentially enabling videoconferencing to replace voice-only calls.
The telco said that its Telstra Air Wi-Fi network will be used to boost in-restaurant guest wireless networking performance for McDonald’s patrons.
In addition, 35 Ronald McDonald Houses will be connected to the new network and be equipped with Telstra Air access.
The network transformation program is expected to take 24 months. However Telstra said there will be “a significant number” of restaurants on the new network within the 12 months.
“Our partnership with Telstra is one of the most transformative technology infrastructure projects ever undertaken by McDonald’s Australia, providing a world class network for now and a platform for innovation and growth in the future,” said McDonald’s Australia CIO Scott Green.
“Our new network will provide more speed and reliability, creating better connectivity experiences for our customers and enhance key restaurant operations for our back office,” the CIO said in a statement.
Telstra brings VoLTE to Cat M1
Telstra revealed yesterday that it had carried out the first live over-the-air Voice over LTE (VoLTE) call over Cat M1. The telco in August announced that it had enabled support for Cat M1 across its 4G network. The standard is intended to enable large numbers of ultra-low-power IoT devices to be connected to LTE networks.
“When standard voice calls are made on a VoLTE enabled handset, VoLTE works by integrating the call into the 4G data stream,” Telstra group managing director, networks, Mike Wright, wrote in a blog entry.
“When it comes to IoT, adding VoLTE to Cat M1 devices means those devices will have the ability to make voice calls to other devices, applications and use cases which could benefit from voice.
“This will pave the way for new types of devices, applications and services for both consumers and enterprise.”
Telstra began enabling VoLTE support across its 4G network in late 2015.