Telstra Next G Pushed Back By Politics
Telstra doubled the speeds of its Next G network but delayed its announcement for a week after the election campaign, fearing it may “influence the debate” between the independents who are deciding who will govern the country.
The telecommunications company yesterday launched a 42 megabits per second (Mbps) USB wireless modem capable of typical user speeds of between 1.1 and 20 Mbps in selected areas. Upload speeds vary from anywhere between 0.3 and 3 Mbps.
The previous modems were capable of 21 Mbps peak speeds, half that of the new modems. Real-world download speeds were between 0.5 Mbps and 8 Mbps.
To put this into some perspective, the new wireless modem, if operating at full real-world speeds, allows users to download a 3 megabyte song three times faster. It will now download in 1.2 seconds instead of 3 using the new modem. For movies, which are of a greater file size, it will be much more noticeable.
Broadband was a key policy difference between the parties during the election campaign and it is also shaping up as one of the concerns of the country MPs who are deciding who will form the next government. Telstra’s speed bump could be interpreted by some as supporting the Coalition’s claims that existing wireless networks could be substitutes for Labor’s more expensive fibre-to-the-home proposal.
“We just didn’t want to feel like we were influencing the [telecommunications] debate,” Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton said of the announcement timing, which was delayed from 25 August.
The dual-carrier technology used will cover approximately 50 per cent of the population at launch. It allows networks to send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously
If elected, the Labor government plans to spend $43 billion on a nationwide fibre network supporting speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, whereas the Coalition would spend $6 billion on a mishmash of technologies that would include upgrading existing copper networks and more wireless to support 12 megabits per second peak baseline speeds.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott has said in the past that Australians shouldn’t assume wireless technologies won’t ever be comparable to fixed-line technology. Telstra’s upgrade shows that wireless broadband is creeping up to the 100 Mbps minimum speeds promised by Labor’s national broadband network.