Australian operator Telstra has provided the first update on its LTE trials, claiming that it has achieved peak speeds of 100 Mb/s download and 31 Mb/s upload over a distance of 75 kilometres in regional Victoria. Conducted between Mount Hope and Mount Burrumboot using kit from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the distance involved is significant as Australia has the sixth-largest landmass with the ninth-lowest population density in the world; as a result, any technology introduced in the country has to travel long distances, cover large areas and still perform well. Average peak download rates for the trial, carried out in the 2.6GHz band, was 88.1 Mb/s, whilst average peak upload rates were 29.6 Mb/s.

Telstra began trialling LTE kit from NSN, Ericsson and Huawei in May, and the tests are due to last six months. There’s no word yet on when Telstra plans to launch commercial LTE services; indeed the operator is likely to squeeze the most out of its existing HSPA network. The HSPA ‘Next G’ network was a world-first, and recent developments on the network show that it is capable of averaging download speeds of around 22 Mb/s.