Telstra has invited journalists to an event next week, which it believes will "cement" its place as a leading global telco, possibly marking the final boost of its Next G network onto 21Mbps or an upgrade of its HFC cable network.

Telstra invitation ... click for full page

The invitation has the Bigpond logo prominently in the left-hand corner, which could indicate that Telstra is planning to announce an upgrade of its HFC cable to 100Mbps using Docsis3.0.

However, the invite also features the logo for Telstra's Next G wireless network. The invite mentioned the fact that "Australia's fastest athletes" will be at the event.

Telstra has been running trials at 21Mbps speeds after Michael Rocca made the first data call using the faster speeds last year. A "full commercial launch" was to be held early 2009, but has not yet occurred.

Another announcement that could occur in conjunction would be the commercial launch of Sierra Wireless' modem, capable of downlink speeds up to 21Mbps, which was trialled publicly at the Telstra investor day.

If these guesses are correct, it is likely that the telco will also talk more in detail about its plans to increase Next G speeds up to 100Mbps. Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo named the upgrading of its mobile network as a focus after being excluded from the National Broadband Network process in December.