From Australian IT: Ben (my flatmate) told me today (and I found out from this article) that Telstra and Hutchison have signed an agreement to effectively 'share' the 3G network setup by Hutchison Whampoa (and used by Three).
Apparently, Telstra will use the network already setup for their own 3G service, to be released in 2005. I was quite surprised by this, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Hutchison has already spent billions of dollar (I think) in Australia setting up the 3G network. The Three service has been around for a while now (over a year), and so many of the kinks have been worked out in the network infrastructure. So basically, Hutchison has already done the dirty work, and Telstra can take advantage of that with this agreement. Smart move. Hutchison gets a good deal out of this, too, with $450 million over four years.
Hopefully the pricing of Telstra's 3G service will be decent (compared to their current offerings). Three has been pushing down the prices of the 2/2.5G networks, and it would be nice to see some competition. However, considering Telstra would want to maintain its [obscenely high] profits, I doubt this. Another thing I'm waiting for are smaller, better phones. Three recently released the Sony Ericsson Z1010, which looks like a good phone, except for the fact that its bloody chunky!
0 Responses to ““Telstra, Hutchison to share 3G””
Leave a Reply