Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) announced that it has improved the speed and quality of its mobile data services through a major network expansion.

The telecommunication company said that it is currently building an 850 MHz mobile network. When completed, the mobile network will have around 1,500 base stations. The company announced that it had already turned on about 350 sites, adding that 50 sites would go live before month's end.

Telstra recently released figures that showed that it has about 7,000 base stations, significantly more than VHA. The NextG Network from Telstra is on the same frequency band as VHA.

VHA said that there are plans to increase the total number of its base stations for its 3G network to 1,400. The company plans to put up most of its base stations in capital city areas.

VHA also said that signal strength may be magnified through the use of small base stations called femtocells. The company said that is currently in the middle of trials for femtocell trials. Business customers may purchase the first cells before year's end. Femtocells may be rolled out to consumers some time in 2011.