Samsung's touchscreen-centric F480 isn't the freshest of the fresh right now, but it's still hot news for folks in Australia. Telstra has just added the F480T to its Next G lineup, and with it comes a 2.8-inch LCD, 5-megapixel camera, support for the outfit's 7.2Mbps data network, 200MB of onboard memory, an SD expansion slot, Bluetooth 2.0, haptic feedback and access to Mobile FOXTEL. Put it in your pocket right now for as low as free on a $60 plan for two years.

Oh sure, Telstra's Next G HSDPA network is pretty swank, but what's the use in having a potent high-speed infrastructure if it's too expensive for anyone to use? Thankfully, said carrier is finally loosening up a bit on its data pricing by giving Aussies more megabytes for the same price that they're currently paying. Starting now, $10 mobile data packages include 150MB per month (up from 20MB), while the $29 pack includes 300MB per month (up from 80MB). Additionally, excess data rates have been "reduced" on both packs, though dollars and cents weren't mentioned on that. Best of all, customers already subscribed to one of the aforesaid plans won't have to do a thing in order to see their capacities bumped.

Oh, come on, Qualcomm, show a little emotion; shed a tear or something! After some two years of planning and urging legacy customers to migrate, Australia's Telstra has flipped a big, red, scary-looking switch somewhere, sending its CDMA network into darkness, never to return. The move effectively obsoletes roughly 3,500 CDMA sites around the country along with what the carrier bills as "redundant equipment" -- a nice little cost savings, no doubt, not to mention the freeing of significant chunks of spectrum for more advanced services. As you might have guessed, Telstra is jumping through these hoops to get customers onto its Next G-branded UMTS network, mirroring a widespread trend away from CDMA-based technologies and toward the GSM roadmap. Globally, it seems like CDMA2000 has years of life left -- but without a shred of major carrier support for the 4G path, its glory days may be numbered.

[Via Pocket PC Thoughts]

We've been hearing that Telstra had the means to deliver some pretty impressive numbers via its Next G HSDPA network, and sure enough, the carrier seems to have finally activated it. According to its website and an independent report, users can now see download speeds ranging from 3Mbps to upwards of 6Mbps, while clocking upload rates between 300Kbps and 1.3Mbps. Telstra claims that users can see peak speeds of 7.2Mbps / 1.9Mbps, but of course, that's under "ideal conditions." So, if you're a Telstra user looking to get in on the high-speed fun, head on out and pick up a 7.2Mbps-class data card, and for those who already own a firmware upgradeable 3.6Mbps-class card, you should be receiving instructions to update shortly.

[Via ITWire, thanks Simon]

Are you ready for one of those pesky but necessary cell sites to reach beyond the few miles that many of them are provisioned for now? Get rid of those nasty watt-limits and stretch that single cell out to 100 kilometers. Well, not really -- but if you're into cell coverage, you might have tasty chops for this. Telstra and Ericsson (one of the largest mobile infrastructure companies) say that a new record of cellular data coverage and speeds has been established with Telstra's Next G HSDPA network -- to the tune of 200 kilometers in diameter and data speeds of 14.4 mbps on the downside. How did they do this? Well, the pair installed advanced Ericsson equipment on several mountaintops in Australia (how quaint) to get that range. Ok, we're ready to move to a mountain range now, just to get that awesomely stretched cellular coverage. How about speeds, you may ask? Telstra stated that peak uplink speeds of 1.9 mbps and downlink speeds of 14.4 mbps were achieved. Not too shabby.

[Thanks, Lucas H.]

While most our Australian readers will no doubt know about this already, those that don't follow mobile developments from down under as closely should still be interested to know that Telstra flipped the switch on its Next G mobile broadband network on Friday, covering a full 98% of Australia in speedy HSDPA goodness. Coming in at a cost of $1 billion Australian dollars (just under three-quarters of a billion US), Next G looks to be the world's geographically largest national 3G network and, according to Telstra, is up to five times faster than other 3G networks, with download speeds averaging between 550Kbps and 1.5Mbps and peak network speeds reaching up to 3.6Mbps, further increasing to 14.4Mbps early next year. Telstra's also putting all that speed to use right off the bat, offering 12 FOXTEL channels exclusive to Next G handsets, as well as access to Telstra's BigPond service, which'll give users news, entertainment, and other exclusive content, including Warner Bros. movies and BBC television programs.