Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Following the announcement this morning of Telstra’s impending DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade to its hybrid fibre cable network in Melbourne to 100Mbps by Christmas 2009, a media and analyst briefing took place at 10.30am.
More detailed analysis will come from iTWire’s telecommunications expert, Stuart Corner, but in short, here’s some additional details.
Telstra is expecting to roll out a range of two-way, interactive services on the network, some of which may well compete with services such as Foxtel Box Office, and which will also deliver high-definition video conferencing services.
Announcements on content partnerships would be forthcoming much closer to the launch of the 100Mbps cable upgrade, signaling they are on the way without revealing who those content partners would be.
Telstra says it will use the platform to test the next-generation services it intends to offer to all of its customers over coming years, and which it says its customers are demanding.
As with other broadband services, the 100Mbps speeds will be shared by all users on each loop of the cable network, with expected download speeds between 70Mbps to 100Mbps, and average upload speeds expected to be 2Mbps, which was said to be more of a technical limitation than any limitation imposed by Telstra itself.
Melbourne was chosen over Sydney thanks to its large footprint, along with the engineering and technology teams located in Melbourne. Thus Telstra says it’s a lot easier for them to start in Melbourne than anywhere else.
At this stage Telstra says it is only talking about “Stage 1” in Melbourne, so while one might expect the other cities with Telstra cable to come online sometime (and likely late) in 2010, Telstra says “customer demand” will drive further rollouts.
When questioned over whether or not the cable footprint might be extended, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo said that it was a possibility, based on customer demand for the new services, but wouldn’t guarantee that it would happen, mentioning existing ADSL2+ and Next G services for those outside of the existing cable footprint.
Telstra also expects that its cable customers will be able to take advantage of telephony capabilities, thus switching over some PSTN customers to cable delivered voice services.
Finally, Telstra pointed out that its major competitor with a similar cable technology (Optus, not that Telstra mentioned them by name) might now be more motivated to match Telstra’s investment given Telstra’s moves today, while seeming to suggest no-one should expect much on that front.
Clearly this story will be reverberating around the boardrooms of Telstra’s major competitors, Foxtel itself and the NBN process the Australian Federal Government is going through, so there’ll be much more movement to come from all parties concerned.
Indeed, the only person that won’t be around to see the cable network upgrade being switched on is Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo himself, who will depart Australia’s shores mid-year to spend more time with his family.
More analysis to come from iTWire’s Stuart Corner later today.
David Bass
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