I prefer to be more subtle... but Chundles has a whole load of facts wrong.
Australia has CDMA nationwide via Telstra (with EV-DO in the major cities) and the coverage is considered excellent (better than any other network's GSM coverage), though Telstra will shut the network down in 18 months. They are replacing it with a new 3G network on the same frequencies that they've called "NextG" (equal coverage to CDMA, give-or-take a few swings and roundabouts). NextG is regular 3G, but on the lower (non-standard) frequencies, and it has HSDPA (high speed data). Vodafone and Optus are trialing HSDPA on the regular 3G frequencies.
3G has been here since 2003 when Three (Hutchison) released it to a couple of cities (Sydney & Melbourne only to start?), in a joint venture with TelecomNZ and roaming onto Telstra 2G when out of range. It was October 2005 before Vodafone and later Optus released 3G (sharing much network infrastructure), mainly in the capital cities. Vodafone really has a very similar setup in Australia and NZ (just a much lower market share in Australia).
Telstra did a deal with Three and expanded their joint network some. Telstra were a little behind on the whole 3G thing, until they did an amazingly fast rollout of 3G nationwide on their existing CDMA frequencies (850Mhz) after they convinced the government that CDMA was too expensive. They're now using the same frequency Cingular are using for 3G, which may bode well for Australia being one of the only countries that could use the 2nd generation iPhone??? (though personally I hope Apple supports regular 3G frequencies!!)
Is there any reason that you guys discuss this other than that you live in Australia? Like when you post these things are you of the opinion that most readers are interested in telecommunications markets in Australia or that these markets significantly impact Apple and AT&T's business development and relationship?
These questions could apply to any of you that live in far away places and for, what generally appears to be little more than simple narcissism and want for attention, like to remind everyone about your place. That Japan has such and such, in England we don't know about this and that, but we have this, the rest of the world has whatever, South America, where is it again, Antarctica, to the extent that it remains (shrinking) exists as well, and Canada likes Apple as well, I'm sure there are people with phones in Micronesia, but what about Madagascar, oh them also I suppose, and Ireland has plenty, heck even Sadr City probably expects to have 3G at some point.
For so long, I was optimistic about our chances of adding anything insightful. But day-by-day we fill these pages with what seems an endless, a cacophony, a plethora, a deluge, a lot of words and little else. We ramble on endlessly, never caring when, and if, we repeat each other. In fact, getting more posts rewards us as the all-important metric will go up as a result regardless of repition or whether what we say has anything to do with the issue at hand.
All this is like trying to gain an understanding of the ecological state of the world by tuning in for the sound bites of an army of amnesiac and narcissist single-species watchers. Someone over there saying mosquitoes are dying in mass. Someone else saying the Water Bufallo has lost their footing, in large part thanks to the advances in recent generations of some sort of cat or some other nasty predator. The rabbits are breading like hotcakes this year. But what about the mosquitoes again, I forgot.
And what hubris we have, always thinking that the people for whom these predictions and analyses matter most are the ones who get it the most wrong. That some how we got it right cause we thought about this or that. Because we know about what signals are being sent in and around Northern Beaches.
And where are all of us who are willing to say maybe and let’s wait and see. In a few months, we’ll know more, for example, about whether we have a revolution or a flop.
