
Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network - milan03
http://cellularinsights.com/telstras-gigabit-class-lte-network-the-work-of-art/
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nrki
It's widely acknowledged that Telstra's LTE network is by far the best in
Australia.

It's also by far the most expensive.

The 180GB of data used for the tests would have cost them - assuming "BYO
device" plans and that Telstra did not give it to them for free:

    
    
        On the "Large" (50/30GB) home wireless plan:
        $150/month + $1300 for the 130GB extra used during peak times.
    
        On the "M" (25/15GB) home plan:
        $100/month + $1550 for the 155GB extra.
    
    
        On a "M" mobile phone plan (10GB):
        $45/month + $74,800 for the 170GB.

~~~
djsumdog
I'm honestly take TPG's crappy DSL, which is cheaper and has unlimited plans,
over high speed connection at prices like that. It's easier to simply queue up
stuff overnight.

What's the current state of the NBN network in major cities? What's the
availability of Fibre in cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Perth? Are there
unmetered plans? Are they affordable?

~~~
cknight
NBN state is less than stellar, a vast majority of suburbs have no NBN at all,
and a very small minority have actual fibre to the premise. Unmetered plans
are becoming more common but are only "affordable" ($60-70 a month) at the
lowest speed offering (12mbit). If you want unmetered at 25 or 100mbit, you're
looking at 80 or 100 respectively, and that's looking at TPG and iiNet.

~~~
coffeecheque
FWIW (and I know this is a single data point), but my experience with NBN has
been positive.

It's also Fibre to the Node (FTTN) which is often maligned in internet/tech
circles for being a poor technology choice. I'd prefer FttP, but it's not an
option and I'll take what I can get.

I'm now getting close to my plan's speed (50/20), but you're right about the
increased cost. It's roughly 45% more. But the speed from the old ADSL2 plan
is probably 4-5 times faster.

The only complaint I would have is that speeds during peak are pretty off the
advertised plan speed. They fall to around 18-20mbs down at night.

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cletus
The impression I get is that Telstra lobbied pretty heavily for an essentially
hobbled fixed-line network. The reasoning is pretty simple: the ACCC stepped
in in the early 2000s and gave access to Telstra exchanges for putting in
their own hardware (DSLAMs) to provide ADSL service. As a result Telstra
(IMHO) decided that fixed line was a loser so focused on 3G/4G as a profit
driver since there was competition there (most notably Optus) and thus the
ACCC couldn't really force Telstra to "share".

The result? A "next generation" broadband network that for a lot of people is
12Mbps... in 2017. This being a hobbled version of the FTTH network the
previous government originally set out to put in place.

The other side of this is Telstra owns half of Foxtel and you can't provide an
IP based TV service at 12Mbps (realistically) so no competition there either.

Anyway, this is what I think of when I see announcements about Telstra's LTE
network. All others be damned.

~~~
RachelF
This makes sense. Telstra's backhaul for fibre and cable customers is very
lacking. They have oversold their bandwidth and suffer lots of congestion
during peak times.

Take a look at this:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/telstras_netflix_do...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/10/telstras_netflix_downloads_get_even_slower/)

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prdonahue
Telstra is on our list of 6 most expensive networks:
[https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-
world...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world/).

This will not be cheap.

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petra
For most customers, current bandwidth is fine usually(and even in the
countries with highest monthly download, the average is 10GB/month), so this
is less interesting.

But this network has a an order-of-magnitude larger theoretical cell capacity
and since most costs are infrastructure costs, cost-per-GB for carriers should
be 5x-9x lower. And there are other innovations around the corner , which
together with this promise something like 25x-50x cell capacity improvement.
And

So bandwidth is becoming abundant. The only question: will prices reflect
that?

~~~
tw04
Given how much more abundant it is on the wired side, and the fact they're all
now introducing caps - no. The only way to increase profits when you're a
monopoly is to charge more money for your product. The only way to do that
when there's no _ACTUAL_ scarcity is to create artificial scarcity through
caps.

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TorKlingberg
For us techies, it's good to know that all the software and hardware
development behind this is done by Ericsson on the network side and Qualcomm
on the device side. They tend to stay a bit hidden because they don't sell
directly to consumers. Telstra builds and configures the network and own s the
spectrum. Netgear puts the Qualcomm chip in an a box with antennas.

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chinathrow
The router shown has a (not enforced) 20GB data cap - so you can blow through
it within minutes :)

~~~
solotronics
theoretical max of service

1Gb/s: (20 gigabytes) / (1000 megabits/second) = 160 seconds

reported maximum in testing from article

400Mb/s: (20 gigabytes) / (400 megabits/second) = 400 seconds

~~~
nikcub
When Telstra cable was first released in the 90s it had a 100MB cap and
130Mbit speed, so you could blow your $150+ monthly plan in seconds (and many
did)

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owenwil
Epic read – and makes me wonder how long fixed services can truly survive.
These kinds of speeds with little infrastructure surely scale better for those
making the money, and are easier to implement for consumers too.

~~~
snuxoll
As long as latency still matters. Gigabit wireless service can certainly be
usable for a broad range of consumer applications, but you still have people
playing online games, streaming, etc. that are heavily impacted by latency.

Personally, I wish I could get a decent 100/10 fiber connection in my area
just for the latency advantages over DOCSIS alone (it takes roughly 10ms to
even get out of my ISP's internal network onto their transit provider).

~~~
Dylan16807
Nothing about wireless inherently causes more than a millisecond of latency.
It's all about system design.

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anentropic
"performing everyday tasks such as ... streaming YouTube 4K videos"

to your phone? what's the point?

~~~
gshulegaard
Or to your computer since the device they were using is a modem:

> Netgear® Nighthawk M1 powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon™ X16 LTE modem.

[https://www.netgear.com/about/press-
releases/2017/NIGHTHAWK-...](https://www.netgear.com/about/press-
releases/2017/NIGHTHAWK-M1-MOBILE-ROUTER.aspx?cid=wmt_netgear_organic)

