A group of 40 Vodafone customers in Sydney became the first Australians to experience mobile broadband at download speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps, which is comparable to the performance of some fixed line ADSL services.
Vodafone invited a select group of business customers who live or work on the Lower North Shore to participate in the trial, which is a precursor to the commercial launch of high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) in Australia. The company will continue to market its upgraded third-generation (3G) network as 'mobile broadband'.
The upgraded network will be launched in Sydney and Melbourne metropolitan areas before the end of 2006.
The 40 customers were invited to attend special briefing sessions at Vodafone's Chatswood headquarters before being issued with the new Vodafone Mobile Connect HSDPA/3G data cards.
"Vodafone mobile broadband is a very attractive alternative to ADSL and Wi-Fi. Why limit yourself to a cable or Wi-Fi hotspot, when you can enjoy the freedom of mobile broadband anywhere within coverage areas?" Edward Goff, general manager, business markets at Vodafone Australia said.
22/9/06
