REVIEW: Telstra 4G (LTE)

Telstra launched its new “4G” Long Term Evolution (LTE) network 2 months ago. While not truly 4G as it doesn't reach speeds anywhere near the LTE-A standard of 1 gigabit per second it does offer a significant potential speed increase compared to the sometimes congested Telstra NextG 3G network.

Telstra 4G's initial launch locations of City CBD's, major towns and Airports will appeal to business travellers who often have to work during trips by accessing a corporate VPN.

It is the best mobile broadband choice for mobile workers such as news photographers who work in time sensitive industries where being able to send your work to a client 5 minutes faster than a competitor can mean a big difference in income.

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The fastest speed test result we got for Telstra 4G during extensive tests in Canberra and Sydney was 41.41Mbps down/18.72Mbps up. Telstra is sensibly claiming conservative potential speeds of 2-40Mbps down and 1-10Mbps up.

More realistic real life usage such as uploading large files to Google Docs and downloading a TED talk from AARNET gave us download speeds of 4.31-25.6 Mbps down and 3.49-9.93 Mbps up.

When used outside a 4G coverage area the Telstra 4G USB dongle drops down to using the 3G NEXTG data network

Any thoughts of Telstra 4G being an “NBN killer” should be dismissed swiftly because it is a wireless internet access method and therefore has the inherent issues of variable performance depending on whether you are using it inside or outside a building, level of signal strength and the amount of traffic congestion from other users of the same mobile tower.

The Telstra 4G USB dongle is as thick as a mobile phone and slightly larger than an ID card when the USB plug is extended. It costs $299 outright for Telstra Business Customers or is included in the cost of a monthly plan eg: $49/8GB or $39/8GB if bundled.

A sustained data transfer at the claimed top speed of 40 megabits/second could finish 8GB of data within half an hour so be careful going over the data allowance because Telstra Business Broadband charges significant per megabyte over use fees.

A Telstra spokesperson told us that “business customers have not tended to be interested in throttling to date, we offer large data allowances and shared data plans to alleviate the problem of reaching 4G data plan limits”.

Nevertheless they are considering optional throttling on an opt-in basis in the future for business users of 4G who want to avoid bill shock.

At the moment Telstra 4G is only available through a single dongle device. 4G capable smartphones will start being released by Telstra in Q1/Q2 2012. The Optus 4G network should be available during Q2 2012 in limited areas and Vodafone has not announced an expected 4G release date as yet.