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.
Under the normal Apple iPhone 2G-era rules, Vodafone making such an announcement would guarantee one thing: no other telco would be officially allowed to sell the iPhone.
But in the 3G iPhone era, all rumours point to Apple opening the floodgates.
As we explored in a previous story on the 3G iPhone in Australia, local Mac forum “Mactalk” made the startling prediction that Apple would open up the 3G iPhone to all telcos in Australia.
Given that Vodafone uses the 2100MHz 3.5G HSDPA network to deliver its 3G services, while AT&T in the US and Rogers in Canada use 850MHz 3.5G equipment, it seems likely that the 3G iPhone will support both frequencies – in addition to 2G GSM – in the 3G iPhone, with the 850MHz network being perfect for Telstra, as they too offer this frequency.
If Mactalk’s predictions are true, it simply means that Vodafone is the first telco in Australia to announce it will sell the presumed 3G iPhone, with Telstra, Optus and Three Mobile still to follow.
That would be the best outcome for Australians... while Vodafone are a great telco and have a very aggressive 5GB of data for AUD $39 plan with 3.5G wireless modems (something that sadly cannot, as yet, be paired to a mobile phone plan but only used with a wireless modem), one telco offering iPhone service will not lead to even more competition in the voice and data space.
Having all telcos offering a 3G iPhone would better achieve this outcome for Australian consumers, and while Apple is under no obligation to be the catalyst to make that happen, it certainly would be fantastic if the iPhone was such a catalyst.
We’ll just have to wait and see what Jobs says on June 9, but I have a really strong feeling that... the iPhone story in Australia is not yet over with this announcement, and more announcements are set to follow very soon... or at least, over the next 5 weeks.
David Bass
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