At the launch on February 16 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg joined Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, and the CEOs of Qualcomm and Sierra Wireless to jointly announce the Telstra Turbo 21, a new 21 Mbps peak-rated mobile broadband modem.

Speaking from La Fira conference center in Barcelona, Svanberg explained, “With this network evolution, the waiting times for downloads will be significantly reduced, allowing subscribers to enjoy real-time multimedia communication services such as video conferencing. Ericsson is delighted to be contributing to this milestone achievement through our leading technology.”

He added: “Supporting Telstra’s ambition to stay at the cutting edge of mobile broadband technology means a lot to Ericsson. Telstra gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our technology leadership, and we are proud to be involved in such a successful partnership.”

Svanberg said that for future work between the two companies, it is important for Telstra and Ericsson to continue to focus on creating a clear and thought-through technology path.

“When we focus in this way, as we have done with Telstra, the process of implementing new technology becomes much more efficient. HSPA is just at the beginning of its life, and with a clear path ahead we can continue to evolve our services quickly and easily,” he said.

Telstra Turbo 21 will be available to Telstra’s Next G network business customers on February 23, with an offering for customers planned for April.  Peak network speeds are expected to increase from 21Mbps to 42Mbps later this year.

Trujillo said that thanks to the work of all the partners, including Ericsson, for the first time, a mobile network will be able to bring a true real-time broadband experience to customers, providing significant benefits in health care, education and business productivity, in addition to an enhanced consumer entertainment experience.

Previous success with the Next G network in Australia has seen Telstra achieve world-leading results, with 3G penetration growing by 19 percentage points to 54 percent at the end of December 2008.