Optus says it has completed a live network trial of automated “Cell Coverage Compensation” technology designed to detect mobile outages and restore service within minutes, and in some cases seconds.
The telco said the trial, completed in June 2026 and conducted on its live network in Sydney and Brisbane, used Nokia’s MantaRay SON solution to adjust surrounding network infrastructure when a cell site goes offline. Optus said this could help reduce service disruption during events such as extreme weather, power failures and planned maintenance.
According to Optus, the trial restored up to 47% of lost coverage footprint and up to 50% of affected mobile connections during planned site outages. The company said the system detects outages based on real-time trigger events such as cell status changes, environmental alarms and OSS link supervision alarms, rather than traditional KPI-based monitoring methods that can take 15 minutes or longer to identify disruptions.
Optus Chief Technology Officer Sri Amirthalingam said: “Network resilience is fundamental to earning and maintaining our customers’ trust… By automatically detecting outages and adjusting surrounding network infrastructure in near real time, we can maintain greater coverage, reduce disruption and improve the overall customer experience.”
Nokia’s Head of Oceania, Global Sales and Customer Operations, Adrian Heley, said the collaboration had taken the capability “from concept to live network reality”, describing it as a way to reduce disruption and maintain service continuity.
Optus said it is planning a phased rollout of the technology over the next six to 12 months. The company said, once deployed, the capability would be used to respond automatically to both planned and unplanned outages across its 4G and 5G network in a multi-vendor environment.
