Australia’s fastest NBN connections are fast, but they’re not the fastest around. In fact a new test from Telstra shows just what the next generation of mobile broadband will be like, and wow is it fast.
You might be happy with the 4G connection on your smartphone now, but in a few years, there’s a good chance that smile will creep up to stupidly gargantuan proportions, especially based on the tests Telstra is doing.
The next generation of mobile data technology is called 5G — what, you didn’t think we were done with 4G, did you? — and it’s something Telstra has been playing with on the Gold Coast at its 5G Innovation Centre.
This week, it linked a group of esports gamers on 5G to play games over that next generation mobile connection, which was streamed over Twitch to other gamers, and the results were nothing short of spectacular.
When we say that, we’re not talking about the gaming itself, but rather the maximum speed Telstra was able to achieve, rocking a staggering 3223Mbps down and 265Mbps up.
Those might just be numbers in a world with an endless supply of number-connected jargon, but those numbers have real meaning, and you simply need to divide by eight to get the megabytes (MB) per second Telstra was able to achieve: 402 megabytes down and 33 megabytes up, both per second.
Or to put it simply, that’s fast. That’s really fast. That’s Game of Thrones in its highest quality in ten seconds fast. That’s how fast that is.
To put that into perspective, the best 4G connections can theoretically hit 1000Mbps in Australia, and they usually won’t sustain it for very long. You can find that technology on devices like the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S9, Sony Xperia XZ Premium, and Huawei’s P20 Pro, but you also have to be in the right part of Australia, and the conversion is still only 125 megabytes per second.
Most people will hit around 50Mbps to 450Mbps per second in their 4G usage, depending on what it is, and that translates to speeds ranging from 6 megabytes to 56 megabytes per second, well under that 400 Telstra achieved in this test.
“Telstra is continuing to test next generation mobile technology in Australian conditions to support the early commercial deployment of 5G mobile services in Australia,” said Channa Seneviratne, Executive Director for Network and Infrastructure Engineering at Telstra.
“5G has the potential to change the way we live and work, and today’s 5G gaming demonstration shows it will unleash a host of new opportunities,” he said.
Telstra continues to test its 5G connection, and its one people on the Gold Coast can test with them, with free WiFi offered around the area connected to 5G to folks keen to see what it is all about.
