Alan Parkington <a.parkington@team.telstra.net> wrote:
> From
> http://lithgow.yourguide.com.au/news...k/1198631.html
>
> A group of stakeholders gathered with Telstra Country Wide and the
> Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy to
> express their views on the transition from the CDMA network to the
> Next G Network. Local Government has been a vocal advocate for the deployment of
> infrastructure in Regional Australia to facilitate new broadband
> access.
> Given the investments that Telstra has made in bringing the benefit of
> coverage and data speeds available on the Next G Network, Lithgow
> Mayor Neville Castle, Mayor said this would benefit all regional
> councils and provide positive experiences for the ratepayers after
> moving to the Next G Network.
>
> ON February 6, Telstra announced it would activate high speed ADSL2+
> broadband at more than 900 telephone exchanges across Australia over
> the next six months.
>
> These will serve more than 2.4 million consumers.
>
> High Speed ADSL2+ broadband can provide network speeds of up to 20
> megabits per second and ADSL2+ can also provide speeds of 12 to 20
> Mbps to users within 1.5 km of an exchange.
>
> These speeds are up to 350 times faster than a standard dial up
> connection", Cr Castle said.
>
> The second announcement was the further expansion of the Next G
> Network which now has up to 6400 sites and provides voice and
> wireless broadband coverage to 99 per cent of the population.
>
> Telstra has announced a Next G evolution roadmap which will deliver
> customers network speeds of up to 21Mbps in a world first and 42Mbps
> in 2009 using HSPA+ technology.
>
> OPEL has said it will use close to $1 billion of taxpayer money to
> build 1361 WIMAX sites to take non mobile wireless broadband to
> around 600,000 sq km and take ADSL2+ to 312 exchanges.

And that will provide real competition for the first time.

> Telstra believes that the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program
> funding awarded to OPEL us the single largest grant of public money
> ever to a corporate body.

Who cares ?