ZDNet Australia understands the carrier is likely to announce a two-stage strategy. The first is expected to involve the delivery of services to large metropolitan areas and the second delivery of services to rural and regional population centres.
Rollout of the first stage is likely to be completed by mid-to-end 2005.
A leading telecommunications analyst, Paul Budde, said Vodafone had been involved in close discussions with Telstra over forging a partnership to deliver third-generation services.
Vodafone's Australian managing director, Grahame Maher, told ZDNet Australia , that the company was still looking at several options for the delivery of services. However, he conceded that the timing was going "down to the wire".
Vodafone and Telstra have already publicly said they are exploring the possibilities for a closer relationship, announcing in late September a network partnering trial in regional Victoria to "assess the viability of sharing mobile base station infrastructure in areas where duplicate coverage exists".
Maher said in a statement at the time, "if successful, Vodafone would progress further network partnering with Telstra Wholesale on a commercial basis to minimse the costs of duplicated elements of each carrier's GSM infrastructure in regional and rural Australia".
Vodafone has to date publicly flagged two options for the delivery of third-generation services -- the first involving the upgrade of its existing network and the second partnering with another carrier. The carrier -- which already offers two and a half generation mobile services -- has indicated its willingness to spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" if necessary over the next two years to deliver third-generation services.
Maher said the carrier would prefer the adoption of a partnering strategy and had held discussions with several telecommunications companies. He added however, the company would be prepared to go it alone if it could not finalise an agreement by the end of this month.
Telstra has already launched an upgrade to its existing CDMA mobile network, dubbed Telstra Mobile Loop, but at 144kbps its speed is well short of minimum third-generation mobile standards.
Vodafone Australia is teaming up with its counterpart in New Zealand to jointly select a principal vendor for the service.
The move comes amid doubt over the level of demand for third-generation services in Australia. The only telecommunications company to offer "genuine" third-generation services here to date, Hutchison, recorded an AU$129 million loss for the most recent half year -- admittedly while securing an impressive 43,500 customers in less than four months. However, it does not expect to break even until 2006.
Meanwhile, Vodafone Australia announced it would be outsourcing its non-core technology and property operations to several partners, including Five D, IBM, Hewlett Packard, TCI and AAP Communications Services.
AAPCS and TCI are to provide full service management for Vodafone's mobile network base-station environment and transmission network, HP will support and maintain the company's processing platforms, Five D will provide property management and facilities management and IBM will provide ongoing support to Vodafone's IT applications.
Maher said "Of the 107 Vodafone people affected, over 100 have accepted positions with the new partners.
"The transition came into effect [on] 1 November 2003".
He declined to nominate exactly what the savings would be, but said it was "lots and lots of money".
