Telstra will charge as much as $319 (US dollars)  for a 21 megabits-per-second modem to access full speed of the new HSPA+ upgrade to its Next G third-generation network.

But customers who elect to take a $25 per month, $32 per month or above ‘data pack’ for 24 months will be able to buy the modem for $192.

Pricing was revealed yesterday at a media event in Telstra’s Sydney, Australia.  ‘Experience Center’, where executives officially unveiled the new 21Mbps HSPA+ service, due to start operating for business customers in some cities from February 23.

Telstra is claiming the upgrade makes its network the world’s fastest — a claim confirmed by Guinness World Records yesterday.

As mentioned by CEO Sol Trujillo in Barcelona, Telstra plans a move to 42Mbps in “some parts” of the network later in the year. ‘You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet,’ promised Sol in a video message screened at yesterday’s event.

Telstra will continue to offer its slower “Turbo 7″ and “Turbo 7+” modems at $94 and $191with $25 data packs. The Turbo 7+ drops to $95 with a $38 or above data pack.

The 21Mbps modem, made by Sierra Wireless, will be offered initially to business customers in capital cities and major regional centers, said Michael Rocca, Telstra networks and services managing director
The 21Mbps service will be extended to 85 percent of the network by June and the rest by the end of the year.

Consumers will be able to access the 21Mbps upgrade via an Australian  Telstra  BigPond-branded modem ‘in coming months’. At this stage it’s Windows users only: so far there’s no Mac version.

Rocca stressed that 21Mbps is a theoretical top speed. He estimated that end users in major cities would experience download speeds of 550Kbps to 8Mbps, depend on factors like terrain, distance from a tower and number of users on simultaneously. In other areas likely download speeds will be 550K-3Mbps.

Typical uplink speeds are ut at 300Kbps-1Mbps.

Sol Trujillo forecast the new speeds would have a major effect in healthcare, with doctors able to download high quality X-rays in about 15 seconds.

Would be buyers can register for the 21Mbps modem at www.bigpond.com/21mbps-expression-of-interest.

Telstra business customers will be able to sign up to 21Mbps Next G on February 23 but consumers will have to wait until April, Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo said.

Sol Trujillo said, “We will launch this nationally. We won’t be going city by city or base station by base station, it will go nationwide.

Mr Trujillo said consumers could expect to download a 2MB video in about 6 seconds with the speed upgrade. Telstra now says the network will deliver up to 42Mbps to 99 per cent of the population by the end of 2009.

Telephone communications analyst Paul Budde, welcomed the potential for higher speed application serving, video conferencing and downloading presented by the new 21Mbps modem, but said adoption would depend on Telstra offering more affordable data rates.

Telstra did not respond to requests for comment.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 12:40 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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