ITWire

Michael Rocca, the Group Managing Director of Telstra Networks & Services said, "HSPA Evolution is live and working for the first time anywhere in the world in a commercial network on the Telstra Next G network in Australia,” Michael says. “Ericsson and Telstra are seeing great results ahead of upcoming trials and device deployment.”

Mike Wright, the Executive Director of Telstra Wireless made the first data call on the Next G network in Brisbane, Queensland (Australia) at 16:00 AEST on 5 December 2008. Trials of the 21Mbps mobile broadband service on the Next G network will begin this month with a full commercial launch to follow early next year.

Ulf Ewaldsson, the Vice President and Head of Product Area Radio at Ericsson said: “Ericsson continues to bring the best possible Mobile Broadband experience to consumers all over the world.

“Ericsson has an impressive list of HSPA world-first records, including the first commercial HSPA network, first live with HSPA on the Uplink and also first with 5.8Mbps on the Uplink. With our achievement of 21Mbps in Telstra’s network we continue Ericsson’s technology leadership in the Mobile Broadband area. We thank Telstra for the close co-operation to reach this milestone."

The move to 21Mbps has arrived, as promised by Telstra, at the end of 2008, with 2009 clearly the year for Telstra to milk its competitive advantage for all it can against competitors Optus, Vodafone and Three Mobile who still live in a 7.2Mbps (or slower) world.

The end of 2009 and into 2010 promises an upgrade to 42Mbps, followed by the advance to LTE (long term evolution) wireless broadband presumably in 2011, which promises to lower wireless latency to wired-equivalent speeds, and deliver the same kind of speeds at the edge of the network that you’ll get at its centre.

Or at least, that's what the LTE camp is promising, which the carriers have demanded of the technology - we'll just have to wait and see if it happens. Until then, however, HSPA+ is the new standard, with Australia leading the world, and other countries sure to follow as the demand for wireless grows and grows.

Whichever way you look at it, wireless broadband is constant improving, and while it seems obvious that wired networks will always remain faster and offer greater capacity, wireless technologies are powering ahead in leaps and bounds, making it easy for anyone, today more than ever, to go completely wireless.

All we need now is true wireless power to charge our devices anywhere, and while the MIT has made moves to bring wireless power to life, it's still a some years away.

Wireless broadband, on the other hand, is so rapidly being taken for granted that mobile/wireless data is, essentially, finally as ubiquitous as mobile/wireless voice.