Australia’s largest mobile operator Telstra claimed today that its ‘Enhanced HSPA’ (eHSPA) network is on track for a world-first deployment by the end of the year, with peak downlink speeds of up to 21 Mb/s (from 14.4 Mb/s today). In a statement, the operator said such bullish goals follow successful interoperability testing between network infrastructure equipment and mobile devices.

The news comes on the second anniversary of the operator’s deployment of its ‘Next G’ network, which provides 3G services in the 850 MHz band and covers 99 percent of the country’s population. In April, Telstra was given the green light to shut down its older CDMA network in favour of the new high-speed GSM-based 3G network. Two months previous, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo told Mobile Business Briefing that the operator hopes to hit 42 Mb/s in 2009 and “within a couple of years of that we expect to be in the 100+ range” via LTE technology. Australia is a hotbed of mobile broadband activity; as well as Telstra, rivals Optus and Vodafone have also announced plans to provide full HSPA coverage by the end of this year.