Friday, March 28,2008 @ 10:30am
New New Zealand network to mean iPhones?
An expansion to New Zealand's cellular networks may open the way for the iPhone, a research firm observes. TeleGeography says it has learned from Telecom New Zealand's director of mobile operations, Martin Butler, that it is a "good inference" that the company will bring over the iPhone. It is in the middle of building a new, $300 million NZD ($241.2 million US) GSM/EDGE network, which should support the 850MHz frequency of the iPhone. Commercial rollout of the network is expected sometime in November, and should reach 97 percent of New Zealand's population.
Butler notes that while the network will also support 3G broadband, this will only initially cover the country's three major cities, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. To achieve anything above EDGE -- a "2.5G" technology -- many users will need to fall back to the company's CDMA network, which supports EVDO Revision A.