Telstra has sold more than 2.1 million 4G devices

Telstra is continuing to lead the 4G market in Australia, with the company announcing that it has now sold 2.1 million 4G devices since the network's 2011 launch.

In the first three months of 2012, Telstra sold 600,000 more 4G devices, bringing the total number of 4G devices it has sold since the 2011 launch to 2.1 million, the company's deputy chief financial officer Mark Hall told the Macquarie Australia Equities Conference on Wednesday.

At Telstra's last financial update in February, CEO David Thodey revealed that of the 1.5 million 4G devices that had been sold at that time, one-third were Apple's iPhone 5.

Hall said that this was now broken down into 1.4 million handsets, 150,000 tablets, 370,000 dongles, and 225,000 wi-fi hotspots.

Optus has not yet revealed how many 4G devices it has sold, but the company is expected to update the market on its progress with 4G when results are released later this month. Vodafone will launch its 4G network in June.

Hall said that Telstra was on track to have its 4G network reach 66 percent of the population by June, and that LTE-Advance will be trialled later this year in areas with heavy traffic demand using the 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrum bands together.

To tackle the ongoing bill shock issue associated with global roaming, Hall said Telstra will soon launch new data alerts, where customers will get an SMS for each 20MB of international roaming data used.

Hall said that Telstra was also expecting to make around AU$1 billion in productivity savings through the Simplification program this year.