21Mbps support over Next G available by year end

As the second anniversary of its Next G mobile broadband network arrives, Telstra confirms that its network will soon become the worlds first to support data download speeds of up to 21Mbps although a device that can make use of it may be a little further away.

There has been confirmation that cellular device technology and network infrastructure equipment has been successfully tested by Telstra using one of its Next G suppliers’ wireless infrastructure equipment. The MDM8200 chipset is the first product to provide this level of throughput and has been created with the combined efforts of Qualcomm and Ericsson. The tests, however, were not carried out over the Next G network but at Swedish facilities owned by Ericsson.

The availability of devices that contain the MDM8200 chips are unlikely to be released for several months yet, which means that although the highest speeds that the current network can reach are 14Mbps throughput there is currently nothing by way of devices that will support throughput speeds of above 7.2Mbps.

An announcement was made on 31st July by Qualcomm that it had completed “the world’s first data call using high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) network technology [achieving] a data transfer rate of more than 20Mbps in a 5MHz channel using the MDM8200.” At the time of the announcement Qualcomm indicated that samples of the MDM8200 would be made available but would not commit to availability for commercial use then and has made no indication since.

Although Telstra confirmed that there would be a range of devices available by the end of the year that would operate at 14Mbps it was unable to confirm when there would be devices to make use of the new 21Mbps speeds. Peter Taylor, a spokesman for Telstra advised that although it had upgraded all the major metro areas the 21Mbps access speeds were not currently available. Taylor went on to advise that by the end of 2009 Telstra planned to increase download speeds up to 41Mbps maximum and that there would be an immediate increase from 14Mbps to 41Mbps in certain areas. The decision of which areas would have their speeds increased above 14Mbps would, however, be “a commercial decision.”