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Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

cellularinsights.com

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Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#11

Post by Dylan16807 »

danudey wrote: post #8
owenwil wrote: post #2

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.

Spectrum is finite though. You can add more fixed clients by adding more hardware at the CO and running more fibre. Eventually, even if no one is even actively downloading, your cellular network will saturate just from the number of clients. The same is true of wireless networks today. An 802.11n wifi network is also limited by the number of clients, even if none of them are consuming their share of bandwidth.

Assuming omnidirectional antennas.

If you aim well enough, that finite spectrum is only shared by a handful of clients.

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#12

Post by cknight »

djsumdog wrote: post #10
nrki wrote: post #5

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…

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?

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.

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#15

Post by gshulegaard »

anentropic wrote: post #14

"performing everyday tasks such as ... streaming YouTube 4K videos" to your phone? what's the point?

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-...

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#16

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #9
snuxoll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 networ…

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

[deleted]

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#17

Post by 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?

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#18

Post by 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.

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#19

Post by 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.

Re: Telstra’s Gigabit Class LTE Network

#20

Post by solotronics »

chinathrow wrote: post #13

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

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

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