The mobile broadband market in Australia has been strengthened with news that Vodafone Australia has selected Ericsson to deploy its HSPA network. The network is intended for completion by 2008, covering 95% of the population with potential downlink speeds of up to 14.4 Mb/s. The deal – reported to be worth around US$440 million – will see all Vodafone 2G sites upgraded to HSPA, as well as a significant proportion of high-demand sites in metropolitan areas covered by an earlier Vodafone and Optus 3G network sharing agreement.

Rival Optus has already announced intent to match Vodafone’s HSPA timeframe, claiming it will reach 96 percent of the country’s population by the end of this year. Vendors Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks will provide infrastructure equipment to Optus. Both operators lag Telstra in the race to offer HSPA mobile broadband services in Australia. Telstra announced its Next G network late in 2006 and now claims to cover 99 percent of the population. Last month Telstra underlined its commitment to future development of its Next G network with news that it is set to become one of the world’s first operators to launch HSPA Evolved technology and anticipates a later move to LTE. The company plans to trial HSPA Evolved – also known as HSPA+ – later this year followed by commercial deployment. “We have a roadmap that in 2009 we intend to go to 42 Mb/s on our network and within a couple of years of that we expect to be in the 100+ range,” CEO Sol Trujillo revealed in an exclusive interview with the Mobile World Congress Show Daily.