Vodafone Australia Selects Ericsson for HSPA

Vodafone Australia has appointed Ericsson as the primary hardware and software vendor to support its national mobile broadband rollout, based on High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) technology, which is being fast-tracked for completion in December 2008. Vodafone is upgrading its 900MHz and 2100MHz mobile network in regional and rural Australia with Ericsson's latest hardware and software, which is rated to the 14.4Mbps maximum theoretical downlink speed. In addition to upgrading all Vodafone 2G sites to 3.5G (HSPA), a significant proportion of high-demand sites in metropolitan areas covered by the Vodafone and Optus joint venture HSPA network sharing agreement will be upgraded to provide higher specification mobile data transmission. Users will be able to access the network using Vodafone Mobile Connect data cards and USB modems. Financial terms were not disclosed.http://www.ericsson.com