Aldi to become Australia's latest MVNO?

German supermarket chain Aldi is expected to become Australia's latest low cost, pre-paid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), according to Android blog Ausdroid.

The blog cited Aldi's latest shopping catalogue which is promoting a yet to be launched service called Aldi Mobile.

The catalogue suggests the Aldi Mobile service will launch Wednesday, March 6. The Aldi Mobile website also includes a countdown timer that ends on that date at 8.30am.

Although no details about the Aldi Mobile service have been confirmed, Ausdroid speculates that the new MVNO could use the Telstra wholesale network to provide its service.

It would become just the second low-cost network in Australia to use Telstra's wholesale postpaid 3G product following the launch of Kogan Mobile late last year.

The Telstra wholesale network is capped below the regular data speeds of Next G. It covers 97 per cent of the Australian population and offers typical download speeds of between 550 kilobits per second (Kbps) and 3 megabits per second (Mbps).

Most other current, low cost MVNO's in Australia, such as Red Bull Mobile, Amaysim and Live Connected, use either the Optus or Vodafone networks.

In addition to Aldi Mobile, Aldi supermarkets will also begin selling mobile phones. It's latest catalogue advertises a dual-SIM, Onix branded feature phone for $19.99 along with a Bauhn-branded Android phone, also with dual-SIM capabilities, for $199.

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