Optus hit a benchmark this week, and Telstra hit one, too. The good news all round is that 5G is fast.
There’s a lot happening in the world of 5G, and it’s not just in regards to how low 5G phones are dropping to. Yes, you can begin to find $499 5G phones from Samsung as well as Realme’s recent effort (which we recently reviewed), among others, but the telcos are also flexing and experimenting their muscle in the technology, and showing the sorts of speeds we can all expect in the coming years.
Optus fired off news only recently that it had managed to hit a staggering 10Gbps in a recent test, a result that basically translates to one gigabyte per second (GB/s), thanks to how Gbps and GB per second are different (for the rough equivalent in gigabytes per second, take the gigabits “Gbps” speed and divide by 8).
But apparently, Telstra has been running its own tests and not talking it up, with a Telstra spokesperson noting the following:
Congratulations to Optus but, unfortunately, it’s not a new record.
Our competitors weren’t to know that tests we carried out over the weekend showed a potential site throughput of more than 20Gbps on Telstra’s 5G network.
According to Telstra, the tests were made in South Australia’s Barossa Valley without the upcoming fast mmWave technology, with the 20Gbps speed reportedly calculated using Optus’ methodology.
In terms of competing for the best 5G, the conversation of strong 5G results between the two telcos is more of a tit-for-tat sort of thing, but the real-world implication is that both networks are fast, and that very fast speeds are coming down the line.
You don’t really need to worry that Optus and Telstra are going to likely go at it like this, because really, the fastest speed doesn’t matter that much. What matters is that in the near future, these sorts of speeds may well be possible to give to you regardless of which telco you use, provided you have a 5G phone and are within reach of a 5G network, and that reach is only going to get better over time, too.
