XT Network launch and live tweets

Last night was a double first for Tech Talks - not only did I go to the launch of the Telecom's new XT mobile phone network, but I live-tweeted the event too.

First up, the event itself. If you want to check what went down, do a Twitter search for #XTLaunch to revisit the evening. You can also check out what went down on You Tube.

Obviously it would have been good to take a handset home from the launch and really put it to the test - however the deal between Vodafone and Telecom to delay the customer launch until May 29 to avoid network interference meant I only had a few minutes to have a play.

The Telecom staff who were doing the demonstrations (and who allowed me to have a few minutes with the phones) were incredibly helpful and knowledgable about the product and seemed genuinely excited.

The stand-outs, for me, were the top-of-the-range Blackberry Bold and the Nokia E71. A demonstration of XT Network's speed on the Blackberry was impressive - a You Tube video was streaming within a second or so of the link being clicked on - while the demonstration of the dual mode on the E71 was pretty cool.

The dual mode means you can have a work setup and a home setup on the same phone, so when you're finished for the day you can switch the phone to home mode and your e-mails won't be downloaded. (It's not that useful for real geeks - everyone knows if we spend more than 10 minutes away from our e-mail we break out in a nervous rash.)

The lights visible on the outside of the Town Hall (the coolest of which was the rocket launch and the view of New Zealand from space) also played a big part in setting the atmosphere inside - one minute I was in a giant aquarium, the next it felt like I was in one of Neil Gaiman's novels - flying flowers, creeping tree roots and some cute birds taking me to a weird and wonderful place.

As for new features? There wasn't too much of that last night. However Dr Paul Reynolds, Telecom's CEO, said there are already plans to upgrade the network, adding Enhanced High Speed Packet Access (EHSPA) access before Christmas.

This provided the true geek-out moment of the evening because this means (according to Reynolds) a theoretical download speed on a mobile phone of 20Mb/s. That's at least six times faster than I'm able to get on my home broadband!

Meanwhile, the moment everyone's been waiting for - confirmation of the available handsets as well as plan costs - will happen next Wednesday morning - and Tech Talks will be there to live tweet the event and bring you the news as soon it's announced.

It's fair to say, though, that Reynolds set the bar pretty high with regards to pricing expectations - he used the words 'simplicity', 'flexibility', 'transparency' and 'radical'.

As for live-tweeting the event, it was a really interesting experience. TelecomNZ was tweeting as well and when they mentioned YahooXtraTech in their tweet my updates when to a whole new group of people.

Within two hours I'd almost doubled the number of followers and, consequenly, had found a heap of new and interesting people to follow.

The only downside was lugging my big laptop and data card around - something I'm trying to work out how I can avoid next week.

Meanwhile, the geeks among us are counting down to the 29th - not necessarily because we like one mobile phone supplier above another, but because there's going to be some real 3G competition in New Zealand, something which is desperately needed as I discussed in my previous blog.

So are you excited about the launch of the XT Network? Which handsets would you like to see available? And what kind of pricing would you like to see? And what do you expect Vodafone to do in response?