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.
Ericsson scored a double whammy this week announcing upgrades of HSPA networks in Australia and Scandinavia to 21Mbps, the first in the world, but it's not just the speed upgrade that matters.
Telstra wasn't saying much about the capabilities of the new service. Michael Rocca, group managing director, Telstra Networks & Services, largely confined his comments to boasting about Telstra's world lead.
"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," he said. "Ericsson and Telstra are seeing great results ahead of upcoming trials and device deployment.”
Ericsson was l more specific. "This enhancement adds a new dimension to broadband experience with the capability for significantly faster Internet browsing and file download, even faster than many fixed broadband connections. With HSPA Evolution, operators will increase the capacity in the networks and reduce the costs to deliver mobile broadband services."
Even faster than many fixed broadband connections. That’s interesting, but not nearly so interesting as the comments from Peder Ramel, CEO of mobile operator 3 Scandinavia, when Ericsson announced a few days later that it was also upgrading 3's network to 21Mbps.
Ericsson said it would provide the enhanced speed in selected parts of the network in Sweden and Denmark with commercial launch planned for the first half of 2009.
In an interview, Ramel said: "We see mobile broadband as a direct competitor to ADSL, and our subscribers expect a service that can compare to ADSL...Using the 21Mbps service we get roughly the same latency as on ADSL, which means it is about half as long as what we have today on 7.2Mbps." This, he said, would make the HSPA service'feel much more comparable to ADSL for users.
Earlier this week iTWire reported Geoff Booth, head of Telstra Country Wide, saying: “Telstra has a proposal now before Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy for the Australian Broadband Guarantee program to offer subsidised access to fixed wireless broadband using its world-leading Next G network combined with high-grade Yagi antenna. [It would provide] quality broadband at prices that are comparable to ADSL broadband in the cities today."
If Ramel is to be believed, this service won't be comparable only on price, but on performance as well. Unlike Telstra 3 has no ADSL services, so has every incentive to promote HSPA as a head on competitor in price and performance to ADSL. But whatever the economics are for 3 in Scandinavia, they will not be too much different for Telstra in Australia.
David Bass
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