Yep, Telstra business plans for both. The BigPond ones that we had before were worse.
Regards, Greg Dr Greg Low 1300SQLSQL (1300 775 775) office | +61 419201410 mobile│ +61 3 8676 4913 fax SQL Down Under | Web: <http://www.sqldownunder.com/> www.sqldownunder.com From: David Connors [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, 31 December 2013 5:48 PM To: GregAtGregLowDotCom; ozDotNet Subject: Re: NBN Petition On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 1:33 PM, GregAtGregLowDotCom <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: What devices will be needed for the 700MHz network? New everything (phone, USB dongles etc). At present, I find Telstra’s 4G network around the country nearly works as well as their 3G network was in the early days. The 3G network is basically unusable in many locations. The worst contention I’ve found is around Collins St in Melbourne. It’s not uncommon to have 5 bars of connectivity and yet to be unable to resolve a DNS address (let alone connect to a site) from about 7:30AM to around 5:30PM. I remember discussing this “performance” with the Telstra “support” people. I was at Brisbane airport and ping times were 3000 ms (yep 3 seconds). He told me that the system was considered working if: I haven't experienced the same breadth of coverage with 4G as you. I often find it calling back to 3G because of distance or building you're in. One of the benefits of 700MHz is the longer wavelengths penetrate buildings better than the 1900?MHz that 4G currently uses. Re 3G - that is unsurprising. The growth they have had has been ridiculous and spectrum hasn't been forthcoming. I read an article a while back from a comms guy who suggested that eventually everything under 3.5GHz will have to be licensed for mobile use ... wouldn't surprise me as mobile is the majority use case for end punters now. At one point they were adding a couple of million nextg subscribers a year. Mentioning that my dial-up modem used to have a ping time of 30ms to 100ms fell on deaf ears. They seem to have enough funds to place huge adverts in the same airports though, where they endlessly make claims about having a fast network. The fastest NextG connectivity I’ve had in Australia was on King Island in the middle of Bass Strait. They have a NextG tower and I suspect that hardly anyone else was using it. Ha! What does annoy me is how they balance the quality of service settings. I can have a 4G iPhone sitting beside the 4G USB modem. The phone is still moving data but the modem isn’t, even though the modem is on a far more expensive data plan. Clearly they’ve decided that people that can’t use data on their phones will scream at them more than people paying a bunch of money to use a modem. The push is always to the lowest cost. I’m sure, however, that lots of business people would pay higher monthly rates for a service that actually worked. I've not experienced bad 4G performance like that. Are you on a business plan? David.
