As of today, Australian will be able to get what is being touted as the fastest smartphone in the world with the launch of the new 4G HTC Velocity on the Telstra network. The good news is that the service will cost no more than 3G.

The bad news is that the new HTC Velocity is not Android 4.0; instead the new 4G phone comes with the old Honeycomb OS which HTC executives claim will be upgraded shortly.

Meanwhile Telstra executives have confirmed that the carrier is currently testing several additional 4G smartphones including two new Samsung models (which SmartHouse believes is a Samsung Galaxy S3) and the new Samsung Note.

The Velocity 4G supports 4G/3G HSPA networks and operates across 1800MHz (4G) and 850MHz (3G) spectrum bands.

Telstra is offering the phone for $0 upfront on its $79 Freedom Connect Plan, or $0 upfront on its $90 Business Mobile Advantage Member plan, on 24-month contracts.

According to Telstra network executives who attended last night’s celebrity launch of the Velocity, the new 4G service will be available at “blistering” speeds 5 kilometres from all capital City GPOs and 3 kilometres from 80 regional centres.

The service will then default to Telstra’s premium 3G speeds which are as fast as what USA networks such as Verizon are describing as 4G.

The new HTC Velocity use Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology which is significantly faster than 3G.

Last night Smarthouse was able to get download speeds of between 36 and 40 megabits per second and uploads of between 8 and 10 megabits per second.

The new phone has 4.5-inch touch screen with 540×960 pixels, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 8-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage.

Unlike the new Samsung Nexus the phone does not come with Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC executives failing to explain why one manufacturer can deliver Android 4.0 prior to Xmas and that can’t.

The spokesperson at last night’s event said the phone would be upgradable to Android 4.0 later this year.

Telstra is offering the phone for $0 upfront on its $79 Freedom Connect Plan, or $0 upfront on its $90 Business Mobile Advantage Member plan, on 24-month contracts.

Telstra mobile director Andrew Volard said that Telstra will “not charge extra” for 4G phones as the Company wanted consumers to benefit from the faster speeds. He said that their new LTE network was capable of handling a large volume of traffic and that Telstra was currently working on expanding their 4G network beyond the 5 kilometre limit.

He said that Telstra was currently testing 4 new 4G smartphones which would be launched on their network shortly.

He said that 4G was “going to be one of our major focuses for Telstra in 2012.”