For the average consumer, mobile network speed probably doesn’t matter that much – it just works. However, if you’re trying to download something large, back up your photos on the go, or you just like the feel of fast connectivity, chances are you’re familiar with speed-testing.
By connecting to variously located cloud servers, Ookla’s Speedtest app attempts to show you the true speed of your mobile connection, but there’s been a hiccup lately. The previous top limit was 500Mbps – speed five times faster than Australia’s paltry national broadband network – but mobile devices have already begun exceeding this.
With 5G just around the corner, that limit is set to be further tested, and so Ookla has released a new version of the Speedtest app.
The change is really just cosmetic; the old app could measure up to gigabit mobile speeds anyway, it just didn’t show you in a nice visual way, with the needle hitting 500Mbps and sitting there. Now, you can see your gauge move all the way up to 1000Mbps – if your mobile supports such speeds, of course.
The reality is we probably won’t need these scales for a while in Australia, but when we catch up with the rest of the world, it’s good to know Speedtest by Ookla will be ready for us (and will probably have moved on, too).
