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If you're taking off to Australia to holiday in the New Year (please come back), some mobile phone changes across the Tasman may impact on you're plans to keep in touch while away.
In late January, Telstra is scheduled to turn off its CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile network. Telecom customers roaming to Australia currently use this network to obtain national coverage and once it's switched off, there's no alternative - Optus, Vodafone, Hutchison and now Telstra all use a different base mobile technology - GSM (global system for mobile).
As a result, if you turn up in Australia with your 027 phone in late January/early February, there's a good chance that your phone will be completely useless to you - no calls around Australia or back home, no picking up your email on your Harrier or the shiny new Okta Touch.
Instead, if you want to roam on your Telecom number and account, you'll have to use a Worldmode phone. Telecom is offering to loan its Samsung W531 mobile for free to customers visiting Australia.
The W531 isn't a bad handset ($299 to buy), but by now I was expecting Telecom to have a handful of mobile phones and smartphone devices available that were worldmode-capable. It seems that the W531 is the only option, something that will annoy people who have a fancier CDMA-only phone.
Telecom claims only five per cent of its mobile customers roamed to Australia in the last two years - around 105,000 people. Still, that five per cent includes the people who are crossing the ditch regularly on business and are making a large number of calls and using mobile data.
Telecom had to delay the launch of its Worldmode phone earlier in the year after it experienced problems merging the voice mailboxes used by the W531 which after all has to juggle two separate systems.
Despite threats during the year from the Australian Government that it would force Telstra to delay the shutdown of its CDMA network until it had migrated customers across, it now looks as though the original timeframe will stuck.
This could turn out bad for a good deal of Telecom customers, who are currently being offered some decent high-end phones, such as the Titan, Touch and Boss, but may not be totally aware that they'll all be useless for roaming in Australia next year.
The late January switch-off also comes at a bad time - most people will be away from the office, the last thing they'll want to be thinking about is arranging to borrow a Worldmode phone and sorting out alternatives for picking up email in Australia.
Telecom will have to handle this one carefully to avoid a backlash of YahooXtra Bubble proportions. Check out Telecom's roaming website if you're on 027 and are likely to be touching down in Australia any time soon.
