Oh, wow: 100Mbit/s to your handset!

That sounds handy-dandy, doesn't it? It's what Russell Stanners, Vodafone NZ CEO, promises we'll have in 2010. Presumably, he was talking about UMTS LTE (Long Term Evolution) or whatever its indecipherable mobile telco acronym is now, at the Eighth Telco Industry Summit here in Auckland today.

Are you excited? I'm not. If Stanners had said "we'll make sure everyone gets the advertised 3.2Mbit/s on today's HSDPA network," I would've nodded approvingly. If had continued and said "we'll build out the network to make sure there's enough capacity so that you can get 10-30GB worth of usage every month, maybe more," he'd have earnt an applause from me.

Instead, we have HSDPA that at best hits 1.4-1.5Mbit/s, unless you're in Vodafone's V.NUE building where the network isn't choked down due to capacity constraints. In that case, you'll be nearer the 3Mbit/s mark for downloads.

Don't get me wrong: anything over 1Mbit/s on cellular broadband is great. However, asking us to believe that in just three years, Vodafone will be able to supply one-hundred times that speed through evolutionary upgrades is a bit much. The backhaul to each cell site would have to be massive, for instance.

Let's see how Vodafone handles the 7.2Mbit/s upgrade that was meant to be in place this year, but which is still only at the trial stage. Why is Vodafone not going to 14.4Mbit/s HSPA like Telstra in Australia, by the way?