Telstra is swapping traditional satellite connections for advanced low earth orbit satellites (LEOsats) across more than 300 sites. 

The new system was launched this week with a successful first call from the semi-rural Sydney suburb of Oxford Falls.

The collaboration between Telstra and Eutelsat OneWeb not only makes Telstra the first Australian telecom to leverage committed SLA backhaul capability via Eutelsat OneWeb, but also signals the onset of the world's most extensive deployment of LEO backhaul technology.

Telstra's network and infrastructure executive, Iskra Nikolova, has highlighted the potentially transformative nature of this rollout, saying it could “improve reliability where its network’s terrestrial backhaul is susceptible to natural disasters and communities find themselves in isolation”.

She said a range of enhancements are expected, including a 15-fold increase in performance and a tenfold improvement in latency, offering a stark contrast to the 250ms latency typical of geostationary satellites. OneWeb says its LEOsats have a typical round trip latency between 50 and 70ms.