Australia's Telstra working to fix iPhone 4S network dropouts

Australian telco Telstra is currently working with Apple to resolve bizarre coverage dropouts on the iPhone 4S, according to ZDNet. For a couple of months, iPhone 4S users on Telstra's network have reported that the iPhone will randomly lose signal and drop to "Searching..." for about a minute before reacquiring the network.

According to Telstra, this is an "issue with iPhone 4S hardware incompatibility due to network upgrades," and the company is "working on fix with Apple currently through software updates." Telstra's engineers told ZDNet they believe the signal dropout woes can be resolved soon through an update to network settings, which will probably be pushed to users' phones in the form of a carrier update.

This isn't the first time we've heard of Apple's newest handset having network compatibility issues. Throughout October and November we received numerous reports from readers in India claiming that the iPhone 4S wasn't compatible with networks in that country. However, just like in Telstra's case, it seemed that this was not so much due to issues with the iPhone 4S itself but rather networks needing to update carrier files on users' devices in order to ensure full compatibility.

So far we've heard no reports of network issues with the iPhone 4S on any of Australia's other networks, and iPhone 4S users in neighboring New Zealand have also had no problems on any of that country's major wireless networks.