Telstra's Next G line-up adds more top-end phones to the mix

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 24 November 2008 05:11

IT Industry - Strategy

Fourth on the list is Samsung’s F480T.

It’s another iPhone-esque “touchscreen” phone, with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, a 5 megapixel camera, high speed data and mobile blogging amongst a host of other smartphone features.

Fifth of the list is Sony Ericsson’s long awaited C905 Cyber-shot slider with a whopping 8.1 megapixel camera, real Xenon flash and more – this is Sony Ericsson’s flagship Cyber-shot camera phone and like the N96 should prove enormously popular.

Sixth is Sony Ericsson’s other long awaited phone, the Windows Mobile powered XPERIA X1 with slideout QWERTY keyboard, large touch screen, a “four way key and optical joystick” and other business oriented features.

These new phones mean that Telstra has virtually all of the “headline, state of the art models” in its range, and it’s something Telstra will no doubt be pushing as hard as it can in its bid to keep all existing customers and churn new ones away from its competitors.

There’s no doubt that some or all of the non-Telstra models will appear on Optus, Vodafone and Three as well, if they aren’t already.

The main difference will be that the models Telstra offers will work on the 850MHz 3.5G (and 2G/EDGE frequencies) and some probably won’t have 2100MHz frequencies at all, because in Australia and on Telstra’s network at least, they aren’t needed.

The battle for the customer on service, range and price will continue, as will Optus and Vodafone’s efforts to expand its 900MHz networks to better compete with Telstra, while 3 Mobile will expand its network range by piggybacking onto more of Telstra’s 850MHz Next G network by mid 2009.

I look forward to see and trying Telstra's own models, the Discovery and the 165i, as well as the Next G versions of the Nokia/Samsung/Sony Ericsson models and to share my thoughts on them with you in the not too distant future.