Designed and built by NetComm, the BigPond Elite Wireless Broadband Network Gateway is essentially a 3G modem/router with the same HSPA+ technology used in its mobile broadband sticks. Telstra is touting typical download speeds of up to 8Mbps, although speed tests on servers in Canberra reached 11Mbps.

The device is well suited to people who don’t have a landline, people who don’t have access to ADSL/cable, or people who move frequently, such as travellers or renters. The ideal situation – at least for Telstra – would be to turn the whole house into a Wi-Fi hotspot, thereby feeding the addictions of power-hungry families. There are four Ethernet ports and two USB ports, so you can plug in printers, external hard drives, etc. But that’s not ideal if you want to use the BigPond Elite as a mobile broadband device.

Executive Director Telstra Consumer, Jenny Young: “The Gateway also helps keep families entertained on holidays and while on the move. All that’s required is power and Next G network coverage and parents can quickly and easily access all their online must-haves, from instant messaging and email to YouTube.”

The BigPond Elite is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. Snow Leopard users, however, have to wait for a patch which is expected to roll out on December 1.

It’s available now for $399, and if you sign a 24-month contract, you’re eligible for a $200 rebate and 50 per cent off for the first 12 months. In fact, you have no choice. There is no prepaid option.

Is it worth it to you?

[Telstra Exchange via APC Mag]

The gadget: The i-Mate Ultimate 8502, the company’s new entry-level workhorse touchscreen and keyboard smartphone which is making its local debut on Telstra’s Next G network.
The price: $999
The verdict: It’s a nice enough phone and the network is speedy, but the BlackBerry gang don’t need to get too worried just yet.

On sale this week, the 8502 (and its keyboard-sprouting sibling the
9502) are making their global debut on Telstra’s impressively quick
(and impressively pricey) Next G network. According to i-Mate, an
increasing number of these devices are finding their way into consumer
hands — but despite that claim,
the main target audience remains business users who would otherwise
probably be sporting a BlackBerry.
There’s some nice features — remote locking via a website if you lose
the phone and the ability to build a custom internet presence for
managing it — and the overall design is a logical successor to
previous models. All the Windows Mobile apps are present and correct,
and call quality is good. But given the choice between this and a
BlackBerry, we’d still be feeling fruity.
A big part of the problem is the reliance on Windows Mobile, which is
still far more Windows than Mobile and lacks the really integrated feel
delivered by RIM. Tellingly, despite the full keyboard, there are some
features you can only access using the stylus, which is pretty much
useless for one-handed operation. Typing on the keyboard is adequate,
but even our rather thin fingers slipped up fairly often.
By far the worst feature is the battery life. We used a fully charged
device for half an hour or so’s light web browsing one day — no calls
or high-power activities — and the thing was dead by breakfast the
next morning.

While i-mate is still largely a business phone company, apparently the
JASJAM also found quite a following in the consumer space, and both
Ultimate models are being similarly pitched at a dual audience.
Keyboard aside, the main differentiator is the camera, which boasts 3
megapixels on the pricier 9502 and a more standard 2 megapixels on the
8502. The phone can be remotely locked via a password-protected web
site, handy if you’re prone to losing devices. It runs Windows Mobile 6.0 (a 6.1 upgrade is in the works, apparently).

You can access the expected Next G features such as Bigpond TV, though
we can’t really recommend that given the costs involved.
We’ve currently got our slippery hands on an 8502, and will post a
lightning review before the models go on sale next week.

In the most basic sense, this isn’t a true enough mobile edition of Foxtel for my liking. It’s still made up largely of looped content rather than streamed live channels. I’m not as down on the concept as I have been in the past, as it does adjust shows to deliver entertaining 5 minute bursts of content you can dive in and enjoy. Likewise the 15 minutes at a time ‘rule’ seems more like a battery-life failsafe – when you’ve been watching a while you do get bumped, but it pops up a ‘resume viewing?’ query so you can jump back in. Of course, if that happens right in the middle of watching something it’s certainly a nuisance.

The overall interface looks great. The channels are easy to navigate, and all channel buttons show what is playing right now. There’s a problem, though – quite often this is out of sync and when you jump in some other show is playing.

Once in a channel, an EPG appears in the lower third so you can explore the next few shows in the line up. You navigate upcoming show listings pressing left-right, and up-down explores other channels and what is showing on them. All while your current channel keeps playing, so it is a genuine EPG experience. Nice. When this is open, the content is boxed quite small, so you can shift into full screen mode when you’re done browsing the EPG.

This leads to compression. When viewing fullscreen, you can see visual compression artifact but it is not at all distracting. This is the best quality mobile video I’ve seen streaming to a handset, and the 3 Mobile TV services are nowhere near the quality we’ve seen here.

Content looping is very much the norm across the entertainment, sports, and kids channels, while the music and news channels were the main areas you would find non-stop programming. The loops were most disappointing upon realising they are not updated daily – you could quickly encounter programming you had seen earlier in the week.

Strangely, on one day we came across an episode of Smallville playing on Fox 8, while the EPG made reference to the usual loops of shorter content (highlights of Jerry Springer, Fear Factor, etc between eps of King of the Hill, Futurama, The Singing Office, etc). Whether this points to occasional bursts of live streaming is hard to say – but full 46 minute TV eps really don’t suit the format and definitely don’t suit the usage limits Telstra places on the service.

To that end, we’ve run a lot of hours worth of content on this handset over the last couple of weeks and have not been kicked from the service. This is a pre-paid NextG SIM that was not marked as a review unit, so it’s unlikely we were getting special treatment. Mileage will no doubt vary, particularly if larger numbers of customers start using the service, but it was nice to see the 200 minute limit is not being monitored as a hard ceiling.

Here’s a list of all channels currently appearing in the service:

Entertainment: Fox 8; The Comedy Channel; TV1; Sci Fi; Biography; E! Entertainment; Fashion TV

Sports: Fox Sports News; Eurosportnews; Union; WWE Mobile

News & Docos: Sky News Headlines; Sky News Business; CNN; Fox News;
BBC World; Crime & Investigation Network; Discovery Mobile;
National Geographic Channel

Kids: Nickelodeon Mobile; Nick Jr; Disney Channel; Playhouse Disney; Cartoon Network; Animax

Music: Channel [V]; Channel [V]2; MTV; Max; TMF; CMC

It’s a distinct improvement over the first generation of Mobile Foxtel, and if I was a NextG user I’d consider paying the $12 a month to have it. But when it slides up to the full price of $18 early next year? Not so much. [Foxtel by Mobile]

So let’s get this straight. You could buy a DVD with four episodes of South Park from ezydvd for $12.95 – a box that you can keep forever and pass on to your grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren, or you could download a single poxy episode of South Park onto your mobile, with resolution the size of a postage stamp, compression artifacts out the whazoo and can only be viewed for seven days for $4.95?

What’s Telstra smoking? Because I want some. Big names for BigPond’s mobile TV [SMH] -Jenneth Orantia