Telstra is looking to launch its own 5G fixed-wireless home broadband product to directly compete against the federal government’s National Broadband Network company, NBN Co, at a time when it, along with its other peer competitors are arguing over the high wholesale prices NBN Co are currently charging.
The launch of Telstra’s own “5G Home Internet” product, sets the scene for the company to keep more money in its pocket whilst bypassing the NBN altogether and the high wholesale prices it is charging.
According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Telstra is looking to launch its 5G Home Internet package this Wednesday and will apparently be priced at $85 a month and will offer 500GB of data to eligible customers. Telstra have stated to the SMH that it expects customers to achieve typical download speeds between 50Mbps and 300Mbps, which is certainly a bit faster at times than my current HFC connection I currently have with Telstra.
Michele Garra, the head of Telstra’s Connected Home and Business unit has told the Sydney Morning Herald that the 5G Home Internet service can offer a possible viable alternative to many homes struggling with current poor NBN connections.
“We will be targeting customers that are having the poorest experience today, those that are being constrained by the technology (used to deliver broadband) whether its legacy ADSL or the NBN, and that, We are also looking at customers that have the highest need to come through our service channels, those having a lot of faults and outages.”
Given its current competitor, Optus, has currently has a 5G fixed-wireless service and is planning to launch two new high-speed plans, priced at $75 a month and $90 a month respectively, later this year, though no data limits were provided.
It also comes at a time when the Federal Government last week announced that through the NBN Co, it will invest in rolling fibre out in Fibre to the Node areas covering some two million households over the next few years, whilst the NBN Co is predicting a much smaller uptake of faster, fibre broadband services.
Furthermore, Telstra has to also tread very carefully with the launch of any new competitive NBN product, as the company because of a non-compete agreement signed between Telstra and NBN Co. Under these terms of the agreement, Telstra would lose the one-off payments that it receives from NBN Co for customers moving from their current existing connections with Telstra to the NBN if it decides to go toe-to-toe against the NBN.
Ms Garra has said that while the 5G service will be highly targeted, the footprint of the service can be expanded quickly.
“Over the next 12 months, we’ll be scaling up so more people can get in on the action, especially as 5G continues to evolve and when millimetre wave [mmWave] spectrum is available.”
With the announcement due tomorrow, we will await to see more details, so watch this space.
When all this rubbish started with Labors grand NBN plan drawn up on a paper serviette at a local pub one drunken Friday night after work, then have a certain idiot ( lets call him Mr. T ) from the Liberals run with the $15 billion plan, now over $50B, and not finished – Anyone in the tech game with two neurones to rub together knew when 5G arrived it would make the NBN obsolete.
Actually Labors 2007 policy was an NBN costing taxpayers $4.7B and finished by 2013. After winning the election Labor threw that policy in the bin and came up with new policy on a plane flight in 2009 with no costings. That came later but i think Labors FTTP plan was going to cost at least $50B. Coalition changed Labors plan so it would be cheaper and finished sooner. Would be funny if 5G destroyed the nbn
Not sure if i am allowed to publish links but this was labors 2007 election promise. A NBN costing taxpayers $4.7B and finished by 2013
It will be interesting to see if customers prefer unlimited data and slow speeds on NBN or quotas and significantly faster speeds on 5G.
Personally, 500GB is ample and I’d prefer faster speeds.
500Gb….yeah that’ll last a long time Telstra, masters of giving customers bugger all data. I’ll stick with Optus and their unlimited plans thanks
Ah but Optus throttle the speed of torrents in my experience (and I checked to confirm recently)
I use torrents also on my Optus home broadband 50/20 mbps NBN plan. I have always had my Qbittornet show that I’m regularly downloading at around 6Mbps (45 to 50mbps) so for me Optus is definitely not throttling my torrent experience. As I use a tablet and phone on occasion to download torrents I have noticed some torrent clients will throttle download speeds if you cap your upload speeds, which is fair enough. As I have unlimited home broadband I always leave upload speeds open. But when I’ve used the Flud or uTorrent app on my tablet/phone I will cap… Read more »
Hmm, I guess this is a ‘individual mileage will vary’ situation. I extensively confirmed that Optus capped my ‘cable’ home internet torrents – and not due to seeding limits on my torrent client (tTorrent on android). But my recent test was just a few weeks ago – connecting to a friend’s Optus mobile hot spot (with good speed) and testing the same large popular torrent file against my home iiNet. Optus = 700kb/s down, iiNet = 11mb/s down. Oh, and a few days ago I got 39mb/s down torrenting with Telstra 5g on my phone, which is why I’m excited… Read more »
On the contrary, I was with Optus for a couple of years and had nothing but awful speeds and terrible service. As soon as I switched to Telstra it was like night and day. Speeds that can’t really be matched, not a single drop out in almost two years, and despite the awful experiences I’ve read about Telstra online I’ve had nothing but good experiences. So far anyway.
I agree that Telstra are the best but they are expensive. I switched from Telstra to TPG 2 years ago because the package was $50/month cheaper. So far no problems but if i get into any trouble i can only get help over the phone. With telstra i could go to one of their shops.
But when i visit my relatives in a small NSW town i cannot sent text message or make phone call with my mobile because TPG drops out. I never had that problem with my mobile when i was with Telstra