Telstra’s New NextG Broadband Tested

In an earlier blog I wrote that I was impressed by Telstra’s new broadband service that is currently being rolled out in limited locations around the country, but will be more widely available later in the year.

After testing the service around Sydney over the last few days I am still impressed – BUT…

I have been testing the speeds via speedtest.net (and I admit this is not an exact scientific measurement service) and so far have experienced the following:  

1)      I have not experienced 30 megabit speeds, anywhere. Not even sitting in a park in central Sydney at 11am on a week day.

2)      I have experienced 10 megabit speeds in the Northern Suburbs of Sydney.

3)      I have experienced up to 9 megabit speeds on train.

4)      It’s worked in a train tunnel and it’s worked inside buildings

5)      I’ve used it to watch streaming video, while in the back of a car, while the car was travelling in deep gulleys and over hills – no drop outs and no loss of packets (well maybe one or two, but we will allow that)

Overall, I can’t fault it and have never seen anything like this before with wireless broadband.

If you are a business and you want fast, wireless broadband available in more places than on your current plan, then $69 a month over 24 months for 6GB of data is not a bad deal. However, I would wait until later in the year when BigPond start selling the service, that way it is likely you can get access to the walled garden of Telstra content and it won’t count to your monthly data quota.