It seems that the customer testing of the Optus HSPA network is going well - as you would expect it to using technically competent broadband users. Our own personnel are also finding out interesting aspects of HSPA - not all of them positive of course as it's a service that because of its nature is dependent on location, building structure and usage by others in the area/closest tower.
As in the UK, but not as widely divergent, the performance varies even in the same location and by type of usage. As in the UK the initial latency is 90 ms or so and makes playing some games not possible but, strangely, doesn't seem to affect VoIP anything like as much as it might be expected to. The other great result, so far, has been the ability to use VoIP from a suitable mobile phone handset which will prove to be a very useful function if it 'holds up' over wider testing.
So, so far, the Optus HSPA service has lived up to the optimisitc end of our hopes for it. There is a lot more testing to do and on a much wider scale but - so far so good.
We now need to finalise the 'plans' we will offer when we release the service commercially. I was interested to see Telstra signalling that their initial sky high charging "because we can" plans have finally run out of steam (presumably because of competition from Optus and Vodafone) as set out in their media release:
I guess Telstra's lawyers are getting lax on checking the wording of Telstra media releases or alternatively Telstra has/have commercial espionage access to the detailed plans and actions of their mobile carrier rivals to allow a statement like this to be made:
"Mr Justin Milne, said customers value the wireless broadband service, which uses the Telstra Next G™ network, from Australia's leading internet service provider which is growing four times faster than its nearest competitor."
Now the 'new/lower' pricing that Telstra has announced is still way more expensive than that of the other three carriers:
BigPond Wireless Broadband plans effective 24 August 2008:
Monthly plan
Monthly usage allowance
Price per month
BigPond Wireless Broadband 400MB
400MB per month
$39.95
BigPond Wireless Broadband 1 GB
1GB per month
$59.95
BigPond Wireless Broadband 3GB
3GB per month
$89.95
BigPond Wireless Broadband10GB
10GB per month
$129.95
especially the absolute 'killer" of: Additional usage charged at $0.25/MB
(which is a charge of $250.00 per gb over any plan's alowance).
What's more interesting is that there is a 10 gb plan at the very reasonable price of $129.00 a month making it much lower cost per gb than any of its 'rivals' and sinalling another not toodistant future change in what end users will see in HSPA pricing 'positoning'.
Of course there are the usual 'catches' in these latest offerings (as there are for almost all carrier offerings) like very long contracts and the need to bundle in a range of other services that are priced sky high but Telstra, like the other carriers, seems to pitch all its expensive advertising campaigns at people too dumb to work out the total price of taking up their latest "amazing offers" and seeing they've all been doing it so long, and presumably so successfully, Australian mobile service buyers really are as stupid as these ads assume they are.
A year ago I made the comment that the HSPA market would be characterised by the usual 'death spiral' of lower pricing for more apparent content between Telstra and Optus/Vodafone which has characterised those companies mobile phone wars of attrition over the past ten years and you didn't have to be too bright to see that coming - and so it has come to pass with more on the way.
Personally, and I could obviously be wrong, I think that alll of the carriers have got it quite wrong - based on my own use of HSPA and the early testing being done at the moment by Exetel personnel and customers.
Why do I say this?
Because:
1.the current state of HSPA (including the Telstra service being used by my eldest daughter) isn't, at least not yet, an ADSL replacement at the 5 - 10 gb per month level that is being "pitched" by the carriers - the latency and variable second by second performance makes playing games or live video far from acceptable let alone ideal as has come to be the expectation from that user demographic.
2.the use of VoIP by an increasing number of HSPA users will remove the expected profits (that are planned to subsidise the very high data allowances in some of the plans) from the very high priced mobile call plans that seem to be the 'norm' for HSPA sims.
I I have little/no knowledge of the actualities of why the carriers are pitching the current implementations of HSPA as an ADSL replacement but, from what I have used and seen, it isn't close to that status at this time (either here or in the UK).
As the build outs continue to happen and the speeds reach ever higher sustainable levels then it will be an ADSL replacement at the 5+ gb per month level but I don't see that being the case today.
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