Vodafone launches new mobile TV channels

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 10 December 2006 22:20

Your IT - Mobility

Vodafone has also been in the news lately responding to a Telstra claim that their 3.5G HSDPA USB modem for desktops or laptops was being advertised as working at a faster speed than the network currently supported. Vodafone’s advertising claimed that the modem would deliver 3.6Mbps speeds, instead of 1.8Mbps speeds which the majority of Vodafone’s network is capable of.

Vodafone asserted that this statement was indicative of what the modem itself could deliver, rather than the network speeds you’d actually receive, and Telstra was able to convince telecommunications authorities that Vodafone’s advertising was a tad misleading.

In actual fact, Vodafone does have at least a couple of trial 3.6Mbps enabled towers in the Sydney CBD, but as these are only trial towers with the majority of the network only able to handle up to 1.8Mbps speeds, Vodafone changed their advertising to match the current speeds of their USB modem, although Vodafone are no doubt not standing still on the issue and are working on getting more towers activated to 3.6Mbps over the following weeks and months.

To counter this, Telstra has already begun trials of a 3.5Mbps HSDPA network that can handle speeds of up to 7.2Mbps and even 14.4Mbps, with at least 7.2Mbps speeds due on the network by March 2007.

Telstra also offers a massive footprint across Australia able to reach 98% of the population in not only metropolitan areas but a huge number of regional and rural areas as well, verifying Telstra’s claim to have a 3.5G (and 3G) network 100 times the size of its competitors.

Whichever way you look at it, there’s increasingly a growing range of TV channels to watch on your phone, and a rapid wireless broadband race underway to deliver high speed wireless broadband over the 3.5G mobile phone network across Australia. We’re not sure how well this bodes for upcoming WiMAX networks but for now cellular based wireless broadband is, so far, winning the race.