Our recent rumours have come true, with word out of Telstra that their new 6Mb down / 1.3Mb up HSUPA services are live. Most existing NextG data cards will be upgradeable to the new DOWNLOAD speeds, which implies new cards are needed to take full advantage. Telstra states the speed will burst at around 6Mbps down (theoretical 7.2Mb down is not mentioned), with average rates between 550kbps and 3Mbps. Up should average between 300kbps and 1Mbps, bursting to 1.3Mbps.
Like the theoretical down numbers that haven’t been used in Telstra’s announcement, our rumours had mentioned 1.9Mb up as a max. Telstra seems very well behaved by only mentioning real burst speeds as their top figures. These up numbers in particular are a big improvement and better than most hard wired services.
Two Sierra Wireless cards, one USB and one Express Card, also mentioned in rumours, are confirmed as the first card available at the new speeds. Pricing below.Now if the pricing could just become accessible to pockets of average depth, this could get very exciting. It does seem a shade more realistic than last I checked – $54.95 for ’20 hours’; $84.95 for 500MB; $114.95 for 1GB; $184.95 for 3GB. Perhaps I should say a shade less unrealistic. I’d think it is more comfortably in the domain of serious business users, but it still has a way to go before the traditional ‘rest of us’ can afford.
The 20 hours option is notable. Can’t see where there is a usage cap mentioned on that one, but you could probably break even the 1GB cap in 20 hours if you really tried to. Not that it would be an efficient use of $55 a month, but you know what I mean… [Telstra Press Release]