TAG | Telstra-led team effort got Next G to 21Mbps in record time |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 17 February 2009 | |
  
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Rob Hart, head of Qualcomm Australia and New Zealand, told iTWire. "Telstra took a very end to end approach to this [upgrading Next G to 21Mbps]. They looked at the entire process and realised that the only way they were going to meet the timeframe they had set was to get all the players in the value chain working together." According to Hart Qualcomm engineers worked with those from Sierra and Telstra as "a very unified team." However he said Telstra's influence had largely been to accelerate the process rather than the end result, as both the network and devices are built to operate according to a standard defined by 3GPP. Initially the Qualcomm chip, and the Sierra Modem, support upload speeds to a maximum of 1.9Mbps and operate only on the 3G network. It is due to be upgradeable to 5.8Mbps during 2009 and to be able to operate across both 2G and 3G networks. Hart said that these upgrades were dependent on additional testing and software not changes to the chip so the initial devices should be user upgradeable with the additional functionality. "There is huge interest globally in 21Mbpsm" Hart said. "In Barcelona [at the Mobile World Congress] last year there were five operators with plans to offer it. This year the number is much larger." |
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