July 13th, 2007
3G BlackBerry coming to Australia
Australia-based ZDNet colleague Jo Best reports that BlackBerry is working on a 3G BlackBerry device for Telstra’s Next G bnetwork.
BlackBerry Asia Pacific technical account manager Chris Ting, tells Jo that BlackBerry has a model “in development” for Telstra’s high speed 3G network.
“They want it to have all the bells and whistles: GPS, Wi-Fi — but it’s still in development and that could all change,” Ting told Jo.
The device, due early next year, will have a maximum download speed around 3.6Mbps.
Although the Next G network has a theoretical maximum download speed of 14.4Mbps, the Telstra-flavored BlackBerry is expected to offer speeds of around 3.6Mbps.
Norm Lo, RIM’s VP of Asia Pacific, added at a launch event for the BlackBerry Curve speed is not necessarily a high priority for users.
“It depends on the applications you are using — you don’t really need high speed, you need low latency.”
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
