Telstra aiming for 1Gbps downloads in 2016

Here in Barcelona, I won’t lie – it’s a whole lot of “B2B” – Business to Business talk.  Companies like Telstra meet with Companies like Ericsson to form new partnership, look at new technology and announce new things.  Now and then though, they have a glimmer of reality for consumers and Telstra today announced they’re working on speed!

It’s one thing to say 5G is “coming” and it is, but when and exactly what that means we don’t know.  More importantly Telstra has made commitments here in Barcelona to bring 1Gbps speeds to consumers – confirming they are working with Netgear to launch the first commercial 1Gbps capable mobile broadband device later in 2016.

What that means is – your mobile phone won’t be getting those speeds any time soon.  But using some pretty nifty technology together – Telstra and Netgear can build a portable hotspot style device that can bring down super fast speeds via the existing mobile technology.  None of this is actually 5G, it’s a bunch of cool things like 4x4MIMO and Carrier Aggregation – but it’s all part of the roadmap for Telstra and Ericsson their network providers to getting to 5G.

As an example of that, Telstra have also signalled today they are working with Ericsson to use the 2018 Commonwealth Games as a test bed for some 5G network infrastructure.  What better place to test high usage networks than at one of the world’s largest sporting events – right?

The future is mobile, and it’s very fast!

Trevor Long travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Huawei, details at the EFTM Disclosures & Commercial Interests page