That rumour about Ruslan Kogan starting his own low-cost telco service on the back of Telstra’s wholesale 3G network looks like it’s dead before it even got off the ground. That’s the word according to Telstra, anyway.
Following the story today, Telstra came out and denied its involvement with Kogan in no uncertain terms:
Telstra Wholesale is not in partnership or any other direct relationship with Kogan.
Telstra Wholesale provides 2G and 3G mobile services based on a reseller model whereby it supplies mobile services to wholesale customers who then sell to their retail service provider customers and/or retail to their own end users.
Telstra also provided some clarity about the network that it wholesales. I know a few of you were confused, so here it is:
The 3G mobile services which Telstra Wholesale resells use parts of Telstra’s 3G mobile network and provides a 3G coverage footprint of 97 per cent of the Australian population with a typical download speed of 550 kbps-3Mbps and upload speed of 300kbps-1Mbps (peak network download speed of 7.2Mbps).
This is different to Telstra’s NextG mobile service. End user speeds will also vary due to factors such as device capabilities, location, distance from the base station, local terrain, user numbers, hardware & software configuration, download source/upload destination and network management measures.
So while Kogan might be pushing to start his own low-cost telco, it’s certainly not with Telstra.