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Wireless Networking Australia Communications Network The Internet

Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G (lifehacker.com.au) 68

An anonymous reader writes: After beginning support for LTE Category 9 last year on their 4Gx network (with its theoretical max download speed of 450Mbps), Telstra has now announced that they will upgrade their network to support LTE category 16. In theory, this means that if a customer has the correct equipment in the correct location, they will be able to have a maximum theoretical download speed of 1000Mbps, and a maximum theoretical upload speed of 150Mbps. Of course, it's unlikely that customers will be able to sustain these speeds, but Telstra lists on their website that 4GX devices currently have a typical download speed of 2 to 75Mbps on 4GX.
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Telstra To Roll Out 1000Mbps 4G

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  • That pretty much covers all LTE phones.

    • Re:2 to 75 Mbps? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EEPROMS ( 889169 ) on Monday February 22, 2016 @07:00PM (#51562785)
      The last time Telstra introduced a new service ie 4G they lowered the average monthly data cap for anyone using the service. So going by past marketing from Telstra the new services average monthly data cap will be about 500mb. I'm not kidding, Australia is the only country with monthly data caps on mobiles going down with each new service not up. Right now if you have a 4G data service you are getting monthly caps that were the norm on 3G in 2007.
      • Really? My Telstra data keeps going up. Last contract it was 3gb a month, this contract at exactly the same $ is now 6gb and if you sign up today with a BYO phone you get 10gb for $60 a month with unlimited calls and texts..

        • by EEPROMS ( 889169 )
          Yes but when the new service comes on line they will offer less data than before then slowly increase it to keep you sucked into their service. The Checkout in 2013 (Australian consumer show) highlighted this when they looked at the new 4G data plans when they first came out noting the data caps were lower than with 2007's 3G plans. I was in the USA recently and one of my associates had over 50Gb a month of data for the same price of a mid range 3Gb plan in Australia. Australian data plan caps are total ru
          • There is no doubt that they are expensive compared to the US. But the US mobile system is fucked with black holes all over the place and providers working on completely incompatible networks. Telstra might be expensive, but at least you have good coverage where ever there are people.

      • They speed up the last mile of the network, but leave the rest with whatever is already installed. It means they can sell super speed internet that actually only delivers 2 Mb/s speeds on average. If you are trying to maximize net quarters results and don't care about the long term this is the smart move. If you are a shareholder you'd want to fire the board of directors at the company, as this prevents the company from selling more bandwidth and reduces customer satisfaction.
  • 8 seconds (Score:4, Funny)

    by slashping ( 2674483 ) on Monday February 22, 2016 @06:43PM (#51562643)
    At that speed, it would only take 8 seconds to consume my entire monthly 1GB data plan.
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Well, it's good to see you get the point of the plan, it's a trap. Fail to pay attention for a few minutes and run up a bill of thousands of dollars. You can bet many lures will be built into the system to lead directly to those wallet crushing pit falls.

      • Well, at least my current plan doesn't charge for exceeding the cap. It just reduces the speed to a crawl for the remainder of the month.
      • Although I agree that these speeds are horribly disproportionate to current data rates from these carriers, I wanted to ask about this:

        Fail to pay attention for a few minutes and run up a bill of thousands of dollars.

        How does that actually happen with a smart phone? I mean it's not like you're going to download ISOs to your phone and even though Netflix is a data hog, you're still capped at the speed it takes to watch the video in real time. Honestly I'm not even sure how I'd make my phone eat up 10 gigs on purpose, let alone by accident.

        • Re:8 seconds (Score:4, Informative)

          by macklin01 ( 760841 ) on Monday February 22, 2016 @07:58PM (#51563239) Homepage

          How does that actually happen with a smart phone? I mean it's not like you're going to download ISOs to your phone and ...

          Mobile hotspot.
          For when you don't want to pay the outrageous wifi charges at a hotel conference center, or Starbucks' connection is flaky, or Charter / Comcast / Timewarner crashes for the evening and you have work to do, or ... etc.

          • A mobile hotspot + attached Windows laptop downloading OS updates is a great way to waste a bunch of data unnoticed.
    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by linuxguy ( 98493 )

      If you're worried about how fast you'll hit the cap, then perhaps you should switch to a carrier and a plan that offers super slow speeds. Something like 56kbps. The old modem speed. Your cap will last way way longer. And I am guessing that will make you happier.

      • If you're worried about how fast you'll hit the cap, then perhaps you should switch [...]

        I don't think you realise how absurdly small the typical Australian data cap is, especially relative to the speed.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      At that speed, it would only take 8 seconds to consume my entire monthly 1GB data plan.

      A good thing Smellstra's $30 prepaid plan now gives you 2.6 GB of data, so you've got a full 20.8 seconds.

      I'm a happy Telstra customer... at least for the next few days. They already have the best LTE network in Perth, The work elevator is the only place I dont get coverage.

      However with mobile speeds, you never get the full speed, it might be 1000 Mbps when you're 2 CM from the transmitter, but 1.5 KM away and you're getting a lot less.

  • So hit your 8GB cap in less then a hour and with $10/GB overage how high can it go before the auto turn off kicks in $10,000?

  • So that would be what, 1 Gbps?
  • Meanwhile, Telstra landline (ADSL) speeds are often around 2Mbps and are charged at about $100/month for 500Gb (again at 2Mbps).
    • It's cheaper to run data over cellphone then over landline (for the carrier) because wire and right of ways are expensive while radio waves just use electricity. The massive price inversion is called profit margin.
  • If you're worried about how fast you'll hit the cap, then perhaps you should switch to a carrier and a plan that offers super slow speeds. Something like 56kbps. The old modem speed. Your cap will last way way longer. I am guessing that will make you happier.

  • by throx ( 42621 ) on Monday February 22, 2016 @10:41PM (#51564197) Homepage

    So the other Sunday when they had "Free Data", customers managed to download around 2000TB of data over the mobile network. Cranking the speed up some more should enable an even more impressive effort in internet binge downloading!

    Refer: https://exchange.telstra.com.au/2016/02/15/big-day-of-free-data/

  • by genka ( 148122 ) on Monday February 22, 2016 @10:56PM (#51564281) Homepage Journal
    So they do 4G at 1G. Will it be a total of 5G?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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