Telstra is planning to introduce a 900MHz version of Next G to help it expand its 4G network in regional areas. Will that be enough to help it maintain decent 4G speeds, and will you need a new device to use it? The short answer: probably yes for your phone, possibly no for your mobile broadband.
Watching live TV on your mobile phone sounds appealing, but Telstra's Mobile FOXTEL option has never been particularly cheap. From July 27 that pain will ease a little with a simpler pack lineup and more live channels, but options for casual users are disappearing.
After testing 3G broadband on the Melbourne-Sydney train trip last year and finding it somewhat wanting, I had no intention of repeating the experience. However, this week's Qantas shenanigans meant that a train looked like the best way to get back to Sydney after a weekend trip, and I figured I'd use the time to see if Telstra's 4G rollout made much difference. The result was mostly not pretty.
Our recent cross-country testing suggests that there's no real performance benefit from using it, but if you're tempted nonetheless, the Telstra Ultimate Wi-Fi Hotspot goes on sale through Telstra stores and on its site today.
Telstra's Next G network is generally held to be the fastest mobile option in Australia. However, my recent testing on the Ultimate high-speed option confirms what many people have been suspecting: as more people sign on, its performance is declining.
Here at Lifehacker HQ, quite frankly we can never get enough high-speed mobile broadband. So the news from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that Telstra will be rolling out a 4G LTE network to complement its existing systems rings nicely in our ears.
We thought it was pretty impressive last year when Telstra was signing up 50,000 new mobile broadband customers a month, but it turns out we're getting even more enthusiastic about Next G. In its just-released half-yearly results, Telstra revealed that it signed up 505,000 new mobile broadband users in six months -- an average of 84,000 every month.
Telstra put out a gushy press release today about how it will be supplying the communications gear for Oprah Winfrey's much-hyped visit to Australia with 300 guests next month. Based on Lifehacker's own considerable experience with Telstra's Next G services, here's some stuff team Oprah should keep an eye on.
Telstra has substantially increased the download volume in its data packs for adding to existing postpaid mobile phone plans, boosting the cheapest $10 plan fivehold to 1GB and topping out with a $69, 12GB plan.
I've already tested how 3G broadband works between on trains Melbourne and Sydney and Sydney and Brisbane. So it was inevitable that I'd have to try a similar trick travelling between Melbourne and Adelaide. Here's what I learnt.
Telstra has altered charging on most of its prepaid mobile broadband plans, expanding the data allocation on the cheaper plans and offering longer expiry dates for the pricier options.
Telstra's Ultimate USB 3G modem has finally been made available for general buyers, having been on sale for business customers since September. Telstra has also adjusted its higher-priced next G mobile broadband packages to offer more data.
Not many people would deliberately devote four days to train travel in order to work out just how good Next G broadband coverage is, but it does provide some unusual insights into when 3G broadband services are useful (and when they aren't). Here's the five key lessons I've learnt during the Off The Rails project.
The Off The Rails experiment has seen some pretty variable results, so it was pleasing to run a test journey from the Brisbane CBD to the Gold Coast and back again and encounter no issues whatsoever.
Welcome to Off The Rails, where I'm venturing along the north coast of NSW on a cheap rail pass to see just how well 3G broadband in general (and Telstra's Next G network in particular) perform on the go and outside capital cities. After the first day, I'm wondering whether the software that drives the process is going to be up to the task.
For the past week, I've been testing Telstra's Ultimate Broadband across a large chunk of the Eastern states. The conclusion? It's delivered some impressive results, but it hasn't yet threatened to get close to its claimed typical download speed of 20Mbps.
Telstra's DC-HSPA+ upgrade promises extremely high-speed wireless broadband across much of Australia. As ever, capital city business types are the focus for its rollout, but how well does it perform in the rural areas which are suddenly the focus of national politics? Today I headed to Dubbo in the central west of NSW to find out.
