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Telecommunications Telstra demos 21Mbps on Next G
Telecommunications Telstra demos 21Mbps on Next G | Telstra demos 21Mbps on Next G |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Friday, 07 November 2008 | |
  
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Mike Wright, Telstra's executive director, wireless engineering and operations, confirmed at the Telstra's investor day briefing that Telstra was on track to upgrade the network by the end of the year and to launch a commercial service early in 2009. Sierra Wireless CEO, Jason Cohenour, told iTWire that Telstra was pushing its suppliers hard to enable it to deliver the higher speeds. "This was a very early demonstration. This is a very cutting edge development effort we are undergoing with Telstra, Ericsson and Qualcomm in preparation for launch of services next year. "Telstra will be doing customer trials in December...We have lots more field testing to do, and more firmware development. I wouldn't describe it as even being at alpha yet...Telstra is the kind of operator that likes to push the envelope and be first to market with services." While it is well accepted that speeds quoted for HSPA are well above those achieved in practice, Cohenour said that the move to eHSPA could narrow the gap between achieved and theoretical performance. "in addition to the raw speed enhancement, you are also, in theory, getting network efficiency enhancements. That remains to be seen, but I would expect to see some improvements in the data rates [as a percentage of the theoretical maximum]." While the USB modem will be the first device to market, both Telstra and Sierra see applications for 21Mbps eHSPA embedded into dedicated devices for machine to machine communications and other specialist applications. "We see opportunities for ruggedised modems that you could put into trunk of a police car or emergency vehicle that would create a wireless hot spot with 3G wide area connectivity," Cohenour said. Another market is expected to be the streaming of high quality video to outdoor display screens." According to Malcolm Thom, Sierra Wireless' country manager for Australia, Telstra's leadership in HSPA rollout is creating export opportunities for local companies. NetComm, in partnership with Sierra Wireless has developed a 3G WiFi router gateway for Telstra and has already announced trials and distribution agreements in a number of other countries." Thom said "I deal with a lot of small developers and the fact they have the Telstra network gives them a great head start. It gives them a six to 12 month lead on the rest of the world in taking that experience to the rest of the market. NetComm is just one of many such companies. Next G is a great proving ground for some of these companies." Cohenour added "M2M in general is a nicely growing market. I would expect to see more [companies entering export markets]. Depending on the resource of our customer and to the extent possible we will help them to do that with introductions to some of our other global distribution channel and operator relationships." |
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