Telstra has jumped the gun on today's official launch of the new 3G Blackberry Bold, announcing it will be offering the new BlackBerry Bold smartphone for $0 upfront to business customers from late September,.

It will invite interested customers to register their interest via the  Telstra Web site or by calling 1800 BUSINESS. But it did not reveal monthly pricing plans.

The new BlackBerry 9000 is not without its problems. It has been delayed twice in the USA .

The initial reason given for delaying the Bold's release from July to August was that it hadn't been certified for use on a US network. however investigations reveal that Research in Motion the makers of the phone have been having problems with  battery life and system stability. The Bold comes with the latest version of the BlackBerry operating system, which is 4.6.097.

Support for 850MHz 3G spectrum on the Blackberry Bold means it can be operated on Telstra's Next G network, claimed to cover 99 percent of the Australian population. Earlier Blackberries at Telstra ran on the now-abandoned CDMA network or on GSM 2G services.

CDMA Blackberry customers were steered towards other devices such as the iMate JasJam, Palm Treo 750, Samsung BlackJack, Motorola Q9 or Nokia E51.

Telstra Business Group MD Deena Shiff yesterday described the Bold as an "ideal business mobile, allowing fast access to e-mail and calendar, fast download of attachments Š and fast access to the Internet. It supports a number of useful business applications including work scheduling programs that require built-in GPS."

Vodafone, Optus and 3 are also expected to carry the BlackBerry Bold. A touchscreen 3G Blackberry, aimed more at the consumer market and dubbed Thunder, is expected in coming months.