Vodafone Selects Ericsson for National Mobile Broadband Rollout

Vodafone Australia has selected Ericsson as the primary hardware and software vendor to support its national mobile broadband rollout, based on high-speed packet access technology, which is to be completed by December 2008.

Vodafone has claimed that its national network upgrade will deliver an enhanced experience to the growing number of business and personal customers using Vodafone Mobile Connect data cards and USB modems. The upgrade will also improve Vodafone’s capacity to provide high-quality voice calls, SMS, video messaging and Vodafone Live! services, such as mobile news, entertainment and the best of the web, to customers in more areas.

Vodafone and Ericsson will deploy network engineering teams in all states and territories simultaneously to ensure more Vodafone customers in regional and rural Australia can enjoy the benefits of high-speed packet access (HSPA) mobile broadband coverage this year.

Vodafone is upgrading its 900MHz and 2100MHz mobile network in regional and rural Australia with Ericsson’s recent hardware and software, which is rated to the 14.4Mbps maximum theoretical downlink standard for commercial deployment.

Russell Hewitt, CEO of Vodafone Australia, said: “In addition to benefiting regional Australia, our national network upgrade will deliver significant increases in upload and download speeds for urban customers traveling outside the cities.”