Telstra makes public statement about Australian iPhone
Posted by Jason October 11th, 2007
In an interview this morning on Victorian community radio station, 3MDR, Telstra’s Victorian Corporate Affairs manager, Patrick O’Beirne passed some comments on Apple’s new iPhone.
Although being interviewed more specifically on the now controversial shutdown of Australia’s CDMA mobile network in favour of faster ‘Next-G’ technologies, the inevitable iPhone question was raised.
O’Beirne willingly confirmed for listeners that Telstra were in fact “looking at it (the iPhone)” and did not expect to know who (which network) would host it “for a few months.”
Surprising news, considering the last we heard from Telstra on the iPhone was that they thought Apple should “stick to their knitting,” as Telstra’s 2ic, Greg Winn so eloquently put it just a month after the device was announced in January this year.
O’Beirne spoke very positively of the applications of the device, but raised the lack of 3G support as a concern. A statement like this indicates that either O’Beirne isn’t quite in the iPhone loop, or was just trying take the attention off it. Steve Jobs announced in January and again at the iPhone’s Europe launch that the iPhone would eventually support 3G. Virgin Mobile are in fact already testing a limited number of 3G iPhone units in Sydney.
Does this mean that Apple are merely ‘dating’ a number of mobile carriers in Australia, testing the iPhone on various networks and frequencies. Or is Telstra trying to still sound like a key player, even though the deal may be signed elsewhere.
Knowing the nature of Apple’s mobile carrier negotiations in both the US and Europe, it becomes impossible to draw any hard conclusions about which network will host the iPhone in 2008. No doubt Telstra are interested in the device, now that they’ve actually seen it, and no doubt Apple are making them jump through hoops to prove their devotion.
What we can take from this is that the Australian iPhone may only be a matter of months away, regardless of whether it’s on Telstra’s 2.5 (EDGE) network, its Next-G network or Virgin Mobile’s 3G network as the iPhone is being tested currently.
