Vodafone cosies up to Crazy John’s and chooses Ericsson for HSPA

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 11 March 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! As Vodafone builds its HSPA network with Ericsson equipment, an agreement with mobile phone retailer Crazy John’s ensures an even bigger national distribution network to capitalise on a 3.5G network that aims to compete strongly against Telstra’s Next G. Crazy John’s may have made its initial fortune with crazy deals and reselling Telstra’s mobile network, but the next decade profit and growth look to be coming from the Vodafone network as both companies extend an ‘exclusive retail and wholesale arrangement’. Crazy John’s wants to open another 20 stores this year across Australia to capitalise on the rapid build-out of Vodafone’s HSPA 3.5G network due for completion by December 2008. Set to put strong pricing pressure on Telstra’s Next G network, as will Optus’ 3.5G network also due for year-end completion, Vodafone has decided Crazy John’s is the mobile retail partner that will best help it achieve its goals for sales and profit. Russell Hewitt, CEO at Vodafone Australia said: “We’ve established a terrific relationship with Crazy John’s. Our first nine months in business together has been very successful and Vodafone is looking forward to a long and prosperous future with Crazy John’s.” Echoing Hewitt’s sentiments, Brendan Fleiter, Managing Director at Crazy John’s, said: “Crazy John’s relationship with Vodafone brings out the best in our company and our people, with high morale and strong sales. Business at Crazy John’s has never been more positive.  This year alone, we’ll open around 20 new stores throughout Australia to capitalise on Vodafone’s national mobile broadband network expansion.”  Meanwhile, the 3.5G network must be built, and Vodafone has decided that Ericsson has the goods to make the network happen by year’s end, saying they “selected Ericsson as its primary hardware and software vendor for the project because of the company's proven technology solution and project management expertise.” Built using HSPA equipment capable of speeds of up-to 14.4Mbps, Vodafone says it is upgrading its 900MHz and 2100MHz mobile network in regional and rural Australia with Ericsson's latest hardware and software, which is rated to the 14.4Mbps maximum theoretical downlink standard and is amongst some of the highest specification equipment currently available for commercial deployment. As the network is classed as HSPA, or 'high speed packet access', this means it is capable of HSDPA - high speed downlink packet access, and HSUPA - high speed uplink packet access - a speed boost for both sides of the upload/download equation. This means that Vodafone could have 7.2Mbps class devices as with Telstra’s Next G, capable of real world download speeds up to 5Mbps, and real world upload speeds of up to 1.3Mbps. But perhaps the network will go faster still, if we see 14.4Mbps class devices by December 2008 – please read onto page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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