It was almost perfect timing. Almost. As I walked down to the George Street Cinemas in Sydney to watch the latest full-length Sony commercial Bond movie, the press release announcing the Australian arrival of the Xperia X1 arrived in my inbox.

The phone is initially available exclusively through Telstra for an RRP of $1,499. Yep, $1,499. To be fair, that comes with a 4GB memory card in the box, so it's not all bad news.

A quick look at Telstra's website shows no mention on the X1 or whether it will be available at a subsidised price, but the big T are having an event launching new handsets next week, so hopefully we'll get some plans then. Given the current economic climate though, it would be crazy for them not to offer the phone on some sort of plan - who can afford to drop $1500 on a phone outright these days?

While we wait for word from Telstra, you can check out the press release yourself below, or see what our US brethren had to say about Sony Ericsson's first Windows Mobile phone here.

Read More »

This announcement from Telstra confuses me: We can already access email on pretty much any mobile phone these days, and I can't picture most people wanting to check their SMS messages on their PC. So what's the deal?

MyConnect is made up of three different parts: My Inbox, which is an online message, contact and calendar management service for all your various messages like email, sms, voicemail etc and is free; My Email which lets you access up to five different email accounts on your mobile for $7 a month (hang on, doesn't the HTC Touch Diamond do that for free?) and MySync, which for $3 a month will backup all your contacts and calendars and synchronise it with MyInbox.

So essentially it's like a MobileMe for Telstra customers. And it costs about the same too - for all the features you're looking at $120 a year.

Aside from the obvious bitching about price, is this something any of you guys would be interested in? Or are there other, better solutions you'd prefer?

Read More »

Telstra's been talking up their NextG network for some time as the world's fastest, and for good reason. At 14.4Mbps, it currently is the world's fastest, although there aren't a lot of devices on the market that take advantage of that speed (most HSDPA phones and modems run at 7.2Mbps).

But, at the company's annual Investor Day briefing today, they unveiled a new modem produced in conjunction with Qualcomm, Ericsson and Sierra Wireless, to blow the current network's 14.4Mbps speeds out of the water. The new modem will be capable of 21Mbps, which is the speed Telstra will be taking its NextG network to early next year, with trials starting next month.

The technology, called enhanced HSPA (or eHSPA), will not only offer much faster speeds than are currently available, but will also improve network efficiency and offer increased capacity for all the consumers that will flock trickle over to NextG.

Of course, knowing Telstra, when they do launch this super-fast modem, they'll also price it beyond the reach of us mere mortals. But still, for wireless internet that covers most of Australia and offers near ADSL2+ speeds, you'd expect to pay a premium of some kind, wouldn't you?

[Telstra]

Read More »

Telstra and Microsoft are going to be getting nice and cosy starting from mid 2009 to offer small and medium businesses a whole host of cloud computing services. The arrangement will use Telstra's NextG and NextIP networks and Microsoft's back-end business software to bring fast, always-on communications across a whole raft of devices, from computers to mobile.

The announcement today is a little light on specifics, instead talking more about the partnership, but it does hint at some of the possibilities, including hosted business applications, mobile services and devices and unified communications. The idea is to offer powerful software solutions at a fraction of the cost by offering them up in a subscription-like format.

If you're a small business owner, this could be a great way of managing your day-to-day business needs, although until we see some pricing from either Telstra or Microsoft, we're going to hold our breath on the whole affordability thing.

Read More »

I never understood watching cricket on your mobile phone. Other sports, sure, but not cricket. When 3 had the Ashes a couple of years ago, I tried streaming the first test match. Even with the phone plugged in, it drained the battery. that and I kept hearing what was happening from the office radio at least 15 seconds before I saw it on the mobile's tiny screen.

But maybe things have improved, now that Telstra's streaming the upcoming Indian tour to their NextG network. The tour, which starts today and runs until November 9, will cost $9.95 a month or $3.95 a day.

Not my thing, but if you're a cricket fan, and a NextG customer, hit the BigPond button to get started.

[Telstra]

Yesterday, Telstra celebrated the second birthday of its NextG network by announcing that they are on track to deliver even faster speeds on the network. The Enhanced HSPA (eHSPA) network is theoretically capable of 21Mbps download speeds - which is significantly faster than any of the country's other HSPA networks (which typically max out at about 7Mbps theoretically).

When the Big T launches their eHSPA network (which it claims will happen by the end of the year), it will make them the first carrier to offer the 21Mbps speeds.

Of course, the only problem with this comes not from Telstra, but from the lack of compliant hardware on the consumer side. After all, NextG is already capable of speeds around 14.4Mbps, but there isn't a whole lot of handsets (or other devices) that take advantage of the speeds. It's why those claims of a 42Mbps iPhone were such crap - the chip inside the iPhone was only capable of 7.2Mbps.

Still, the hardware will come eventually, and although Telstra is certain to charge obscene amounts of cash for these types of speeds, it's still impressive that you'll be able to get lightning fast wireless connectivity all around Australia.

[Telstra]

Need some wireless internet love, but without the hassles of a 24-month contract? Have oodles of money to spend? Then Telstra's got the pre-paid wireless internet solution for you!

The Big T has released its own pre-paid wireless internet solution. For $149 you get yourself that wireless modem you see in the pic above, plus $10 worth of credit. The cost of the actual data varies, ranging from $20 for 150MB to $100 for 6GB.

Credit expires within 30 days. Unless you buy some more credit that is, in which case it carries over to the next month.

We bag Telstra's data pricing (and rightly so), but for some people, the Big T is the only option, especially in outback Australia. So it's good to see them offering pre-paid for those customers who wouldn't necessarily have the coin to sign away two years of their life on wireless data.

[via Lifehacker and Tipster Stuart - Thanks Stuart!]

Are you a Three customer? Do you feel inadequate when you travel outside the major metropolitan areas as your phone drops back to Telstra's 2G network while all your friends boast super-fast 3G speeds on their "other network" phones?

Well, feel inadequate no longer, with Three today announcing that they're expanding their 3G network to cover 96% of the Australian population by next year.

The expansion looks like it will be a combination of using 3's own network, plus piggybacking on Telstra's NextG network as well, although just how much of the latter will be happening is unclear. What is clear is that 3 are already working on the expansion, with 50 new sites, including Newcastle and the Central Coast of NSW, scheduled to go live by the end of the year.

At the moment, Three reaches a paltry 56% of the population with 3G. For me, I just hope they patch up the black spot near Sydney airport for when I'm on the train, so I can spend more time on Giz. Cos I love you guys.

UPDATE: I've heard back from 3 on a couple of questions I asked them - turns out that the extra infrastructure they're building will take them to over 60%. To get up to 96%, they're jumping in bed with Telstra's NextG (the 2100MHz network NextG also uses is a 50/50 joint venture with 3).

On top of that, once the ink has dried on their deal with Telstra, it should bring down roaming costs. To what, we'll have to wait and see, but if it's cheaper than the current roaming charges, then it's good news.

Press release is below:

Read More »

Remember QR codes? Those small, square designs that act like barcodes that you can scan with your mobile phone's camera? They're huge in Japan - those crazy Japanese are even putting them on graves.

Well, Telstra announced today that they'll be introducing the software to read QR codes on their NextG handsets as a free download for customers. And from the sounds of it, it will happen automatically - so you don't even need to do anything.

According to the press release, Telstra's planning on using the QR codes to offer, among other things:

"the latest news, sport and weather information; music files; maps; store information for later if you're in a hurry; tickets to shows; video presentations that give users guided tours, how-to information and trailers; links to social networking sites and special discount offers."

Read More »

At midnight tonight, April 28 2008, somebody at Telstra (let's call him Bill) will stand up from their desks, leaving a cup of lukewarm coffee, half a donut and a bag of Burger Rings, and wander over to the CDMA control panel behind him. He'll then hop down on all fours, wade through the dust that has settled since the network launched in September 1999, and pull the plug.

Telstra's been fairly aggressive in informing CDMA customers that they need to switch over to NextG if they want to keep making phone calls, so it isn't expected that too many people will suddenly be left with a worthless mobile phone.

If you are still clinging to CDMA like it's your firstborn, make sure you sort yourself out today. And if you have made the switch and are wondering what to do with your now obsolete handset, make sure you recycle it.