Telstra will start offering customers 5G-ready smartphones in the first half of 2019, CEO Andy Penn confirmed today. While he was scarce on details, Penn says that Telstra will deliver exclusive access to 5G smartphones via partnerships with major manufacturers.
"This is the year of 5G and, as a world leader in the testing and development of 5G, we have been working closely with numerous global manufacturing and industry partners to make this revolutionary technology real-world ready," said Penn.
"These strategic relationships are now paying off directly for our customers, who will soon have exclusive access to 5G enabled devices."
Under these partnerships, the devices in question will be available exclusively through Telstra - at least initially.
At this stage, Telstra has not provided any information on which manufacturers it has partnered with. Apple is almost certainly out of the question; we're not expecting to see 5G iPhones until 2020.
American telcos Verizon and AT&T have confirmed that they will offer a 5G Samsung smartphone in the first half of this year, so there's always a chance this could be the device Telstra is referring to. It's expected that this will be a 5G Galaxy S10 variant.
Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Alex Choros
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