Telstra finally delivers good news with $1b 3G launch

Stan Beer
Friday, 06 October 2006 12:08

Business IT - Networking

After months of sniping and complaining between the Government and the Telstra board over regulation, CEO Sol Trujillo finally delivered some good news to the carrier's long suffering shareholders with the launch of a new $1 billion 3G network today.

• Announcements

Even a burst sprinkling system that interrupted the big presentation couldn't dampen Trujillo's enthusiasm as he delivered Telstra's mobile broadband competition killer.

According to Trujillo, the NEXT G (3GSM 850 MHz) mobile network will reach 98% of the population and far outstrips its 3G rivals in terms of performance and coverage.

NEXT G is claimed to be the world's widest area national 3GSM network, more than 100 times bigger geographically than any other 3GSM network in Australia.

According to Telstra, NEXT G is up to 50 times faster than dial-up and up to five times faster than other 3GSM networks. Telstra customers will experience network download speeds averaging 550Kbps to 1.5Mbps, and peak network speeds of up to 3.6Mbps, increasing up to 14.4Mbps early next year.

"This is an exciting day for all Australians, no matter where they live and work," Mr Trujillo said. "No one else, here or abroad, has built and launched such a far-reaching, high speed, wireless broadband network in less than a year. It is a versatile, high capacity network with head room for higher speeds in the months and years ahead."

The President and Chief Executive Officer of global telco vendor Ericsson, Mr Carl-Henric Svanberg, who co-launched the network with Trujillo, said Ericsson expects Telstra's new mobile broadband network to reach peak network speeds of up to 40Mbps by 2009, in line with the development of global standardisation.