Soon they'll have 42Mbit/s cellular broadband across the ditch, and Telecom and Vodafone boosting their networks here. Mobile bandwidth is going off its socks. But it's not always for your benefit (keep reading).

The notion of mobile networks fulfilling every broadband need holds of appeal. Imagine one super high speed account you could take almost anywhere on your laptop or phone. With 255Mbit/s LTE arriving by air, who needs fibre-to-the-home, let alone DSL?

On paper, it looks like the technology’s getting there, quick smart:

Faster!
In Australia, nearly two years ago now, Telstra teamed with Ericsson to build the world’s first WCDMA 3G network juiced with HSPA Evolved (called HSPA+ by Telecom here). Download speeds of up to 14Mbit/s were offered.

Faster!!
Last week, Telstra upgraded again, this time offering an HSPA Evolved network (called “NextG”) with a peak speed of 21Mbit/s, arguable the world’s fastest cellular network.

Faster!!!
By the end of the year, Telstra says yet another upgrade is in the works, this time lifting the peak speed to a head-spinning 42Mbit/s (remembering that an ADSL2+ landline tops out at 24Mbit/s).

Oh, come on
And Telstra chief executive is already looking ahead to an 84Mbit/s network, which is where HSPA Evolved tops out; after a network operator has to move up a gear to LTE (“Long Term Evolution” or so-called “4G” technology).

Later this year, Telstra is due to be knocked off its worlds-fastest pedestal as US carrier Verizon goes live with the planet’s first LTE network.

In Japan, NTT is also trialing LTE, hitting speeds of up to 255Mbit/s. And at last week’s World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, LTE modems were featured by many hardware makers, while Ericsson has an LTE chipset shipping to phone makers.

Here, Vodafone currently offers up to 7Mbit/s over HSPA, while Telecom promises peak speeds of 14Mbit/s over HSPA+ after “T-Day” in June.

Both are already talking of upgrade paths to LTE (if not for a couple of years).

Bye, bye landlines?
I put all this talk of dizzying mobile speed to Ericsson’s Kursten Leins. Surely ever-growing cellular bandwidth means we’re heading for a fixed line-free future?

I thought the Aussie-based marketing manager would be bullish, since although Ericsson handles all forms of telco infrastructure, it’s been most famous recently, in industry circles, for building Telstra’s “NextG” network to a crash 10-month schedule.

Not so. “We see wireless as a complement,” says Leins.

Their benefit, not yours
The key reason wireless isn’t about to take over, explains Leins, is that “It’s always the peak speeds that are quoted, whereas the bandwidth is always shared. And the more concurrent users, the more the bandwidth squeezes down.”

A second, related reason: “A carrier often wants not higher speeds but higher capacity. Rather than install more base stations, which cost a lot of money, they want to add more bandwidth to existing base stations so more people can use them.”

So: there’s more bandwidth, but some of the gain is nullified because more people have to share it.

“You could argue more benefit for the operator, but there is some uplift for the customer,” says Leins.

That 21Mbit/s network? 8Mbit/s
That’s why, beneath the 21Mbit/s headlines, Telstra says users should expect average download speed around 8Mbit/s (and I must say Vodafone and Telecom are both scrupulous, at the customer level, in claiming realistic average speeds rather than peaks for their current networks).

That’s no great shakes next to fibre (which typically hits 100Mbit/s or faster in both directions), or even ADSL2+.

And it explains why, as someone who's careful to always use a phone at the top of the foodchain, I've seen mobile broadband indisputably improve in New Zealand, but I never feel like I'm getting the full whack.

Vodafone swings both ways
When I asked Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners if wireless would take over from landlines, he pointed out that to a degree it already has, with mobiles accounts out-numbering landlines by four to one.

A well-read Stanners also name-checked a survey that says by 2020, most people will connect to the internet, most of the time, through some kind of mobile device.

The centre of gravity is undoubtably shifting.

But at the same time, Vodafone’s focus on mobile is not exclusive. In fact, the telco has gone in the opposite direction, spreading its bets through its purchase of the landline ISP formerly known as Ihug; the construction of its “Red” ADSL2+ network in unbundled Telecom exchanges; and a fibre backhaul partnership with Vector that will benefit both wireless and wired accounts.

The landline war can be a grind, however, with dozens of ISPs. In mobile, we have only two major players, and Stanners' eyes light up when he quotes the stat that, in Australia, 30% of broadband revenue comes from mobile (a comparable figure isn't available here; Stanners says it would be less).

Now that's an incentive to upgrade.