Telstra today unveiled the official name for its new 4G service, running on the 700 Mhz spectrum and due to start rolling out in the coming months. Named 4GX, you could read the ‘X’ as ‘eXtra’, giving more speed and more coverage, and will also cover aggregation services between the carrier’s new 700 and existing 1800 Mhz services.
The switch has also been flipped today on 4GX services in some areas of Hobart today and Brisbane gets to join the party on Wednesday. It’s not just capital cities getting in on the 4GX action either, with Telstra announcing that services would be switched on in Albany, Ulladulla, Murray Bridge, Narrawallee, Shepparton, Bateman’s Bay, Swansea, Bunbury, Port Macquarie and Chinchilla this week. The 4GX branding will be used to indicate to customers where the new services are available.
Telstra’s keen to push the possibilities offered by Category 4 and Category 6 devices running on the 4GX network, with Galaxy Note 4 devices in the room scoring big marks on speed tests – though officially, Telstra’s saying that Category 6 devices will get between 2Mbps and 100Mbps. We’ve seen some stellar results from the device from our readers (and rest assured, Telstra also noticed those tweets).
Discussing future possibilities that are allowed by the 4GX service, we were also treated to Telstra’s first public demonstration of a Voice over LTE call with both voice and video calling, switching between circuit-switched and IP-based networks without dropping the call. Mention was also made of LTE Broadcast experiments going on at major sporting events around the country, including upcoming tests at some of Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival events.
Finally, what good would a super fast network be without a device with which to test it? Unfortunately Telstra didn’t give us all a Galaxy Note 4 (nor a Nexus 6), but they did give us their latest LTE hotspot device, the soon-to-be-released Wi-Fi 4G Advanced II, manufactured by Netgear (according to the sticker on the box, it’s actually Netgear’s recently-released Aircard 790S.
We’ll be taking Telstra’s 4GX network out for a spin over the next couple of weeks using the 4G Advanced II hotspot and seeing how it performs.
Are you keen to get on board Telstra’s new 4GX network? Tell us in the comments!
Hi Jason and team,
any chance you could do a run down on the different carriers the current and announced bands (again) and then which recent devices work? I find tracking this stuff like calculus, i sort of know it but I’m never certain Ive got it right.
Why do these marketing bunnies have to come up with a fancy name for something that is just another LTE band??
Just like Optus’ 4G Plus?
Makes it easy to differentiate between old and new devices and networks they support though
But it’s just another LTE band. A bit like AT&T saying the 21Meg 3G service is 4G when it wasn’t.. Here in NZ it’s just LTE 4G on all carriers on the 700, 1800 or 2600 bands.
It’s LTE Advanced, the next evolution of LTE
And only $10 a kilobyte! Should you exceed your monthly allowance of 30kb, you will be charged $5 for each byte.
Should have branded it “4GNope” as in “nope, you can’t use it”.
Interesting. I was around the St Ives area some 2-3 weeks ago and did a speed test and to my amazement I got 99Mbps down. I didn’t believe it so walked around and did another test with the same result.
I’ll be heading over to Brisbane on Thursday. I’ll make sure to upload a couple of pics to test the new 700Mhz service from my Nexus 5.
The Nexus 5 isn’t capable of this frequency.
GSM arena says that it is… Doh!
But not band 28… So good luck in getting conected…
Do you have a list of all the 4G 700MHz compatible devices? My (now dead) G3 was one I think?
Note 4 is the first to fully support the 700mhz+1800mhz aggregation.
No it isn’t
this would be very helpful
Not that hard to find that info. Compatible handsets include Iphone 6, galaxy s5, HTC One M8, LG G3, Galaxy Note 4
good work
Not to forget the Nexus 6, Huawei E5786 (aka Telstra Wi-Fi 4G Advanced Pro X), Netgear AirCard 785S (Telstra 4G My Pocket Ultimate Wi-Fi) and ZTE MF910 (Telstra 4G My Pocket Wi-Fi Plus).
I was gonna buy a new hotspot device.. Will this one be available outright?