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At the small town library in Hebel, a remote community near the border of the states of Queensland and New South Wales, dial-up was, until recently, the only connection visitors had to the internet. Downloading information took a long time and certain files could not be accessed at all.

Today, library-goers browse the web at 1Mbps (megabits per second), thanks to a modem and an antenna on the library's roof that connects with a mobile base station 36km away.

John Gonner, Telstra Wireless' executive managing director, says stories such as Hebel's are multiplying as the digital divide that used to separate Australia's big cities from its rural communities is being bridged.

Telstra has been holding road shows across the 7.7 million sq.km continent to show what a mobile phone and laptop can do with the new, "turbo-charged" USD 1 billion network. Even the most skeptical outback residents have been amazed, Gonner says.

"They're seeing a whole new world opening up. And for the first time, Australians have a phone that works everywhere."

Gonner, a retired executive from US West, was recruited by Telstra in 2005 to oversee the construction and rollout of the nationwide network. In August of that year, shortly after arriving in the country, he walked into a store in Sydney pretending to be shopping for a mobile phone.

There were more than 800 phones for sale in the store to meet the needs of Australia's fragmented telecom system.

In the end, Gonner recalls, the salesman suggested he buy three different ones: a 3G phone to use while in Sydney and Melbourne, a CDMA phone to use when traveling in rural areas, and a GSM phone to use while traveling abroad.

The field trip convinced Gonner that Telstra's roadmap for the future should be a unified system that would help the company rein in its own costs, make the operator more competitive in urban markets, and - for the first time - extend broadband into rural areas.

A request for proposals to construct a nationwide GSM network, "turbo-charged" with HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access), went out within weeks, and negotiations with vendors began soon after.

Telstra was adamant about one thing: their Next G network had to be built in one year, a feat all vendors but Ericsson, Telstra's existing supplier, turned down as unrealistic. Ericsson agreed to deliver and deploy radio access equipment, core infrastructure and services, ranging from design to integration and project management, in connection with the massive project.

"There were thousands of challenges, most having to do with getting enough resources for the project," Gonner says. "We needed thousands of contractors and Ericsson had to go as far as India and Europe to find rigger-trained labor. And you can imagine the logistics of getting cranes transported everywhere."

At the height of the project, a new base station was constructed every 25 minutes.

In spite of the tight deadline, the network went online in October 2005, several months ahead of schedule. It was the fastest deployment of a nationwide network in the history of telecommunications, and a major accomplishment for Telstra, which was working hard to transform its image as a complacent incumbent carrier.

Today, the network reaches 98 percent of Australians. It also allows roaming to more than 100 overseas destinations.

"We're showing the marketplace that we can execute our plans," Gonner says.