2nd January - COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stephen Conroy will decide within days whether to allow Telstra to pull the plug on its CDMA mobile phone network at the end of this month.

Senator Conroy is due to get a report next week from the Australian Communications and Media Authority on whether the new NextG network is providing enough coverage in the bush.

Telstra wants to close the old CDMA network on January 28, but former minister Helen Coonan, who had a poisonous relationship with the telco, said this would not be allowed until there was proof regional CDMA services were up to scratch.

ACMA has been comparing CDMA and NextG coverage.

CDMA mobile phones will not work after the old network is closed.

Spokesman Jeremy Mitchell yesterday said: "We're very confident of a 28th of January shutdown of this old network," he said. "The coverage is definitely there."

He said more than two million NextG phones had been bought and all CDMA business customers were switching over.