Customers who have long lamented the lack of true choice in Australian mobile will have some reason to rejoice today, after technology website ZDNet reported that Telstra will begin a wholesale offering of their 3G network to resellers.

Until now, the choice for mobile consumers has been Telstra, with superior coverage and speed, Vodafone, with a decent network plagued by problems in the past few years, and Optus, who have a good network that is overloaded and slow to upgrade. All other companies are reselling a slightly crippled version of Optus’ network, with Vodafone reselling in limited capacity to companies like TransACT. Telstra has remained aloof, keeping its superior NextG 850Mhz network to itself.

"This is a competitive and high quality product which delivers great coverage and speed to our wholesale customers. We believe it is a competitive 3G offering in the wholesale market," the telco giant said.

More about coverage than speed

Telstra’s 3G network can currently boast speeds averaging from 1.1 Mbps to 20 Mbps in some metro areas. The wholesale product will be capped to a speed range of 300kbps to 1.1 Mbps. This compares to a speed cap of 3Mbps that Optus imposes on its resellers. Effectively, the customers who will be looking to take advantage of this offer are those who have lusted after Telstra’s coverage, rather than speed.

Optus and Vodafone are currently both building 4G, Long Term Evolution networks (LTE) to compete with Telstra’s own. No word yet on whether Optus and Vodafone will be wholesaling their newer network to compete with Telstra.