Telstra customers woke up to a sun shower of good news this morning, when their provider’s new 4G LTE network went live in Australia — or within parts of it, at least. After months of development and a
soft launch in late August, Telstra finally flipped the switch on its broadband network today, bringing LTE coverage to capital cities, airports and other select areas. According to the company, its new infrastructure offers download speeds between two and 40 Mbps (a 25 percent increase over what its 3G network supported at launch), with upstream rates ranging from one to ten Mbps. For now, Telstra has upgraded its base stations in all eight capital cities and some 30 regional centers, though it plans to expand its coverage to 80 sites by the end of this year. Subscribers can hook up to the network with a new USB dongle from
Sierra Wireless (pictured above), as long as they’re within a five kilometer radius from a capital city’s station, or within three kilometers of a regional center. Before long, however, Australians may not even need a dongle to bathe in LTE goodness, as Telstra is planning to launch a new 4G-enabled HTC handset by the first half of next year. At this point, details about the Android-based device (codenamed “HTC 4G”) remain fuzzy, though the carrier says it will boast a 4.5-inch screen, eight megapixel camera and dual-core processor. For more details, head past the break for a pair of press releases.
Continue reading Telstra’s 4G LTE network goes live in Australia, new HTC handset coming next year
Telstra’s 4G LTE network goes live in Australia, new HTC handset coming next year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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LightSquared added another name to its list of allies yesterday, with a wholesale agreement allowing AirTouch products to dabble in the world of wireless. The phone manufacturer, which makes telecom devices that work with voice, data and video, looks set to become the first newly created MVNO to use LightSquared’s 4G goodness. Of course, all this is assuming that the nascent network actually gets off the ground. But now that it’s supposedly solved that pesky GPS interference problem, what could possibly stop it?
