Australian telecoms giant Telstra yesterday launched a new 3G mobile broadband network as the firm moves to bolster investor confidence ahead of a troubled share sale.
The company's chief executive, Sol Trujillo, claimed the world's geographically largest national 3G network would offer wireless mobile and Internet access to 98 percent of the people of sparsely-populated Australia.
The "turbo-charged" service, which boasts a beefed up third generation (3G) mobile technology, was five times faster than any other network in the country and would offer its users 12 channels of television, sport and movie downloads.
"You see this is the day ... that life in Australia will be changed forever," said Trujillo of the network, put in place with an investment of A$1 billion (US$746 million) in little more than 10 months.
"This is an exciting day for all Australians, no matter where they live and work," he boasted.
"It is a versatile, high capacity network with headroom for higher speeds in the months and years ahead," said Trujillo, who is at the center of an increasingly bitter war of words over his management style with the Australian government, which holds a 51.8 percent stake in the telecoms firm.
Telstra customers will be able to download material at an average speed of 550 kilobytes to 1.5 megabytes per second (Mbps), with peak network speeds reaching up to 3.6Mbps, increasing to 14.4Mbps early next year.
Telstra's 3G customers, which currently number approximately 420,000 compared to rival Hutchinson's 1 million, will have to buy new handsets which it has been developing in conjunction with Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson.
"From today, almost every Australian is going to have access to nationwide, very high speed mobiles and Internet," Telstra group managing director consumer and small business David Moffatt said.
But the glitzy investor briefing strategy at which the plans for the network were unveiled was rudely interrupted when a fire sprinkler activated in the room, sending hundreds of analysts scrambling for cover.
As Telstra touted its new broadband mobile network, analysts also poured more cold water on the significance of the announcement, especially as Australia lags far behind in its fixed broadband infrastructure.
"I'm very sorry but this is a load of rubbish, it's just another network -- nobody's going to use it for watching television services," media analyst Paul Budde of the Web site Budd.com said.
While the technology is good, it is not what Australia really needs and it remains unclear whether the user rates would be affordable for a significant proportion of the population, according to Budde.
Also at the investors' conference on its five-year transformation program, which began nearly a year ago, Telstra forecast 1.5 to 2 percent revenue growth next year, with earnings before interest and tax to rise 2 percent to 4 percent.
The network launch came ahead of the government's unveiling on Monday of the prospectus for the sale of A$8 billion worth of stock, or one-third of its holding, in Telstra.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
RSS