Alan Parkington wrote...

> ELSTRA has resorted to offering customers on its CDMA mobile phone network a
> cash incentive to switch services, in the latest sign it is struggling to
> force thousands of users to make the move just three weeks before the old
> regional network is scheduled to be shut down.

I'm starting to wish that I wasn't an early adopter. Instead of a "cash
incentive" I would have liked to have hit Telstra up for a Motorola Razr2 V9 on
a cheaper plan than the $60 plan that it's currently available on.


> But a Telstra spokesman, Peter Taylor, said the closure of the network was
> on track after "exceptionally busy" trading last month. Telstra was opening
> temporary kiosks in regional areas to help customers make the shift.

Haven't seen any around here and talking to a mate on Monday who runs a local
Telstra shop (I think that he's an independant dealer, rather than a "Telstra
shop" dealer), he said that he hasn't had any great numbers rushing in to get
new phones.

Certainly I know quite a few people who are still on CDMA, but also have a few
who are now on NextG, some migrating from CDMA and some from GSM.

talking to a coupla mates who own ZTEs, they tell me that when they go fishing
offshore (down towards Cliffy Island off Wilson's Prom), that NextG reception
can actually improve over what CDMA was doing on previous trips. They also
reckon that they're picking up cells from Tassie.

Last weekend though, they were out with their young blokes. One of them had no
problems getting a NG signal while the other had nothing. In the end he turned
off his phone and back on and it came good.

Alternatively, at another mate's chalet up near Mt Hotham (Dinner Plain), the
guy who had a reliable signal on the water had problems, while the other one had
no problems.

This might be a function of the ZTEs' performances, or batch quality, perhaps.