NextG Internet

setsujoku · Post by **setsujoku** » 29 November 06 9:16 pm

Has anyone else given telstra's new NextG wireless internet a go

I have had a bit of a play with one of the new pcmcia cards, and the speed is good, straight away i got a 3.6 meg connection, inside a building. Setting up the connection was dead easy, straight out the box and connected within 5 minutes

Looking at the coverage areas it seems even better than the traditional wireless broadband they offer, but i'd be interested to know, if you get outside of the build up areas just what kind of coverage you might get

Post by **caughtatwork** » 29 November 06 9:45 pm

That's the project I'm working on right now

hsdpa (go look it up) is on all but the cheap handset and you are supposed to get upwards of 3.2mbps.

All the aircards are hsdpa capable so you should get that speed as a minimum.

Coverage should be as good as CDMA (EvDO) as it's using the same base stations initially adding more over time. Don't rely on my knowledge regarding service availability though, check with Telstra for hsdpa coverage maps.

It's a stronger clearer signal than the current 2100MHz 3G system and even inside concrete bunker buildings, you should still get a very decent voice signal, although hsdpa may not get there. I know that compared to GSM the signal and clarity is worlds apart.

Video telephony still sucks though.

hsdpa will kick in after a few seconds of connection, so initially it may be slow, but once the data stream starts coming down it will speed up.

As with any new deployment there will be (and are) hiccups. At the moment most of the traffic for the country is going through a restricted number of sites, so there are bound to be some occassional bottlenecks.

By the end of December there should be 15 machines processing your data throughout the country so reliability will be significantly higher than EvDO as there are only 2 machines to cover the entire country.

If the price wasn't so outrageous, I'd be seriously interested.

fehrgo · Post by **fehrgo** » 29 November 06 10:06 pm

I've been using mobile data for a while, since I work in the industry and my employer pays the bills. However, there is more to this which should probably be mentioned, and it is what I view as the primary flaw in these systems as implemented by carriers in most countries.

How much is Telstra charging you for bandwidth? I saw 1.5c/KB somewhere, for casual plans. Let's extrapolate costs for some typical web page visits:

http://www.geocaching.com/my/ in my case is 120KB of content, 104KB of which is not cacheable. I'm fairly certain they are not .gz compressing their traffic. So, hitting that page would cost me between $1.50 and $1.80 via Telstra's "NextG" casual plan, depending how much was cached in my browser.

The Great Aussie Christmas BBQ 2006 Queensland works out to 45KB of text, plus 190KB of graphic content. That would be $0.67 to load the text, and another almost $3 for the graphics.

So, if I had started up my phone, visited the "My Geocaching" page, and then clicked on the link for the Aussie BBQ event, I'd be out a bit over $5. Oops, I just pulled up a Google Map, hybrid view for the event. That is 98KB of web page, and an astonishing 1MB of graphic data. That will be $16.83, please. That map better be freakin' good. Thank you for preloading extra data, Google.

One last calcuation, and that is how fast Telstra can draw blood from your stone. 384Kbps is 48KB/second. At 1.5c/KB, that is $0.72 per SECOND if you are downloading via your phone at the theoretical speed limit for 3G mobile data, or $3.84/second if you happen to have a 2Mbps connection via a PCMCIA card in your laptop (or higher, as mentioned in the previous post).

I think Telstra isn't going to get many takers with rates like these. They have you by the jewels, and are not planning on letting go any time soon.

Edit: Ah, here is their pricing page: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/mobiles/prices/datapacks.htm

Eric

TeamBeanDare · Post by **TeamBeanDare** » 29 November 06 11:26 pm

You can get these PCMCIA cards on an hourly plan with unlimited data so If you've wanting to chew through a lot of data I suggest you go that way.

If you only need a little burst of data from time to time, ie. downloading your email headers to make sure no-one is missing you then a by the kilobyte plan would be suitable. If heard figures about 1.5c but as I understand it the pricing is different from 2G. I heard of a $29 plan with 70mb or 41c / MB or 0.041c /Kb . (roughly) If you're serious about using the data you should be able to estimate and then track how much usage you will use. 70 Mb would cover me for all my email for a month especially if I only download headers for most my email.

Hoping to get my "boss" (read ball and chain) to allow me the pleasure one day.

Check out this pricing from the same website
http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/busine ... ricing.htm

fehrgo · Post by **fehrgo** » 30 November 06 12:16 am

Pay as you go plans have always been very predatory. I'd hate to be a user who accidentally discovered that my mobile had data capability.

Sure, the price scales much better with data bundles, however, it is still 100x or more what the bandwidth is costing the carrier, and 10x what you would pay in Australia for data access using other means. If carriers want to see users adopt the technology on a wide scale, they need to learn to think differently.

My brain is still wired to the North American broadband model of "Free Bandwidth" with your account, where you are paying for the maximum throughput rather than for a data allowance. The Australian market just refuses to go down that road.

Sorry if my frustration is showing through. Over the past few years, I spent too much time in meetings with carriers on issues very close to what I'm talking about here. They want successful mobile data services with a subscription model, while still charging a tariff on the data. One or the other, guys.

Eric

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 30 November 06 1:06 am

With recent regulatory decisions going against Telstra you can be sure that they're betting on this wireless technology being their primary data distribution mechanism in the future... it is easy to deliver, gets to all the regional, rural customers and is consistent across the country. I'm betting that within a short time we'll see the prices for Telstra's wireless data fall to virtually the same rates as they are for Telstra's standard wired data.

You can already get all-you-can-eat wireless plans for quite reasonable rates.

setsujoku · Post by **setsujoku** » 30 November 06 10:59 am

How much is Telstra charging you for bandwidth? I saw 1.5c/KB somewhere, for casual plans. Let's extrapolate costs for some typical web page visits

The plan that we are going with is 1GB per month, which is $99. Its not cheap, but i guess since there isnt too much competition its not going to drive the prices down anytime soon

Edit: Ah, here is their pricing page: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/mobile ... apacks.htm

I cant find the page that i was referencing from yesterday, but it was more targeted towards the service that i was testing, and that was with a pcmcia card on a laptop, rather than a 3G phone itself.
As we arent going to be using it for voice calls, the rate of them arent really an issue, its more just for remote access into work.

My brain is still wired to the North American broadband model of "Free Bandwidth" with your account, where you are paying for the maximum throughput rather than for a data allowance. The Australian market just refuses to go down that road.

eventually we will catch up to this model, but unfortunatly whilst telstra has a firm grip on every single australians balls, as far as broadband access goes, it wont happen in a hurry

With recent regulatory decisions going against Telstra you can be sure that they're betting on this wireless technology being their primary data distribution mechanism in the future... it is easy to deliver, gets to all the regional, rural customers and is consistent across the country.

When you acutally look at the coverage map for the 3G availability (which of course i cant find the same map as yesterday now), as soon as you go further inland, and dont get coverage for your mobile now, you cant get 3G coverage either (for the same reasons already mentioned in this thread)

Geof · Post by **Geof** » 30 November 06 11:53 am

http://www.geocaching.com/my/ in my case is 120KB of content, 104KB of which is not cacheable. I'm fairly certain they are not .gz compressing their traffic. So, hitting that page would cost me between $1.50 and $1.80 via Telstra's "NextG" casual plan, depending how much was cached in my browser.

Um the Sultan of Brunei dosn't visit this country often enough to build a network with those fees.

JackHenry · Post by **JackHenry** » 30 November 06 3:56 pm

I'd be interested to know if anyone can get reception in the Hahndorf/Littlehampton area. Come up for a coffee Martyn and try it.

setsujoku · Post by **setsujoku** » 30 November 06 4:26 pm

JackHenry wrote:I'd be interested to know if anyone can get reception in the Hahndorf/Littlehampton area. Come up for a coffee Martyn and try it.

According to the coverage map here there should be excelent coverage for the service, including tv, video, and broadband. so now you can enjoy your coffee and watch telly at the same time all on the laptop

I still cant find the map of the whole of Australia, that i had yesterday, which is annoying as it gives a good idea of the vast areas where this service is still lacking

Will come for a coffee soon though. i havent cached up in the hills for a while, and the map is getting a bit cluttered

JackHenry · Post by **JackHenry** » 30 November 06 8:31 pm

What the maps show & what actually happens are spelled out in the fine print below the maps

"...Customers should also be aware the Telstra wireless coverage maps also may indicate planned coverage expansions of the Telstra wireless network. Coverage planned for the future is based on Telstra's rollout schedule. Telstra reserves the right to modify this schedule without notice, as required from time to time...."

So any time you want to have coffee, you know where to come.

setsujoku · Post by **setsujoku** » 04 December 06 4:52 pm

talking with a friend the other night who works at telstra, apparently the product has been rolled out about 6 months ahead of when it was planned, because there happened to be an AGM coming up...

The project itself is about 3 months behind, and wasnt supposed to be launched until march next year.

the speed that we are able to get now, is nothing compared to what is expected from the finished product. The Coverage that you can expect from the finished product, will be about 1/3 more than the current CDMA network, so that will be great when you are standing at a cache out down the coast, or out in the country, and you just need to find out that extra bit of info

Apparently roadies at concerts are liking the nextg stuff as well, as the frequency it operates at doesnt interfere with the systems that are in use (providing they are in a 3G coverage aread, and havent failed over to the CDMA/GSM network)

The Barramundi's · Post by **The Barramundi's** » 12 January 08 2:12 pm

Now that I have a laptop, and I'm out and about, I'm looking at the current USB modem plans from Optus, 3 and Vodafone.

Current special is 5 Gb for $40 a month with 3G in major cities and GPRS network outside from Vodaphone. This is what I'm thinking of getting, does anyone else use this type of broadband?

If I go this way, I can reduce the home service to next to nothing.

Post by **caughtatwork** » 12 January 08 2:41 pm

Watch out for the speeds on Optus, 3 and Vodaphone.

Optus has recently announced HSDPA for small coverage areas, so I doubt you'll get anything better than about 248Kbps outside of those areas.

If you want / need megabit service, you'll need to stay inside the coverage area of use NextG.

Skippy · Post by **Skippy** » 12 January 08 3:41 pm

The Barramundi's wrote: Current special is 5 Gb for $40 a month with 3G in major cities and GPRS network outside from Vodaphone. This is what I'm thinking of getting, does anyone else use this type of broadband?

I have just got this deal yesterday, so far so good.

I've got unlimited email and internet on Blackberry but find the screen too small.

They also have the inZone for $45 with 5gigs which you could use in car as long as you have 12v to 240v converter it's also a wireless router