Marking the second anniversary of the opening of its Next G HSDPA network, Telstra is on schedule to deploy the Enhanced HSPA (eHSPA) to the Next G wireless network. Once the upgrading is completed, Telstra network will be able to offer a peak downlink speeds of 21Mbps by the end of the year to its Australia customers.

Mike Wright, Executive Director Telstra Wireless, attended the world’s first live demonstration of the eHSPA interoperability at Ericsson headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. “This is truly game-changing. Telstra has a proven history of investment in Australia’s nation-wide, HSPA-enabled Next G network and this is our latest, very important step toward realising this technology,” Mr Wright said. “Practically speaking, our tests have shown that when combined with our planned rollout of Ethernet backhaul, this network will deliver truly high-speed connectivity on the move.”

Telstra’s Next G wireless network, which was turned on October 6, 2006, is covering 99 per cent of the Australian population. eHSPA, also known as HSPA Evolution or HSPA+, is designed to enhance the mobile broadband user experience and enable a wide range of services. The interoperability test was performed on a wireless infrastructure network solution from Ericsson using Qualcomm’s MDM8200 product.

“The peak speeds and network efficiency enabled by this evolution will encourage the development of more innovative applications and, importantly, increase our network capacity to support the explosion we are experiencing in wireless internet use,” added Mr Wright.