Telstra's Turbo 21 HSPA modem reviewed: not 21Mbps but still the world's fastest
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Mar 24th 2009 5:16AM
posted Mar 24th 2009 5:16AM
Read -- Turbo 21 press release
Read -- Turbo 21 review
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Should go well with their 5MB/month data plans with $1/MB excess charges. Sign me up!
But you must admit, they are the most reliable ISP in Australia.
We have Telstra Business Broadband at work, and we have never had an outage or any random problems that I get from from home ISP.
You get what you pay for ultimately.. but I can not be pro Telstra, so I will never be a subscriber of a Telstra service.
There's paying for reliability and service...And then there's paying out your bum bum for no real good reason when competitors do it for far less but have relative reliability.
What's the point of having a reliable network when you can't even use it for anything??
If you have a look at their prepaid broadband packs for a start; you'll see that you'll pay $100-ish for 6GB. Same price as Virgin. So no, not hideously expensive in EVERY case. But still expensive. :-(
$100 for 6Gb??? That's an absolute fortune to waste on internet access. For that price I'd expect a true unlimited service with none of the caps that Australian ISPs are so addicted to and way more than 20Mbps.
I'm currently connected to the web at 3Mbps on my 3UK USB modem and that costs me £7 for 10Gb. There's something seriously wrong in Australia when ISPs can get away with ripping their customers off the way they are.
One reason our costs are so high is that our ISPs have to pay so much for a slice of bandwidth on the 2 pair phone line that connects us to other continents. Still, Telstra are taking the piss severely and always have. Unfortunately they're the only telco that many Aussies trust (mostly older people, and rural residents who are set in their ways). Telstra does have the best network, but it sickens me the way they fleece people who don't know any better. :-(
Hell$tra, the pride and glory of Australian Fraudband...
The same ISP that just a two years ago in 2007 was offering ADSL with 200 megabytes a month data download limit...
The company that brings Australia to the top of the bottom in OECD's annual reports when it comes to network access penetration in businesses and households.
The $hining $tar behind the reason why the online business market in Australia (especially when it comes to streaming media services) is rock bottom and Australian online businesses who target Australians are better off hosting their sites several thousand miles across the pond, in the US rather than on home soil.
Just like their previous iteration of NextG network, this is more about boosting Hell$tra's stock than offering a true solution that truly benefits the consumer.
Next G?
Next please!
@ lee
firstly... ?
Telstra is reliable? i think you better go own the whirlpool Australia forums and see what Telstra is really like. If you want reliability go with Internode or Westnet and if you live in Adelaide Adam Internet. Dude Telstra is so darn shit its there fault were stuck in the stone ages with craptastic download quotas and also they are such pricks they can unlock ADSL2+ in many areas but its only when some other company goes and spends heaps on creating a way for people those areas to get ADSL2+ Telstra says ' SUPRISE! the two years we have been telling you bs was in fact bs and well we do have ADSL2+ we just did not want to activate it because there was no competition'.
Fucking Liberal government privatised Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank (i don't know which one to be more pissed of about so i mentioned the bank)
@Dave Chappelle
I am only talking from my experiences with Telstra... and they have been good, especially when on the Business package. If we ever have an outage we have a tech call us, and that has yet to occur in over 18 months... Im sure the home service is far different from the business service. Again, you get what you pay for, home users are and always will be treated differently.
And you can not disagree that Telstra has the best mobile coverage in Australia, so again, you are paying a premium for having the best service.
I agree with you, Telstra are a bunch of pricks, but I will give credit where credit is due.
Will be jumping on the '21Mbps' bandwagon in May/June, when the consumer plans are released. Hoping they'll drop the price of the plans, or at least offer larger quotas. :X
Much more reliable than satellite for starters - up and down like a rollercoaster.
What's the point of paying for something if you can't use it?
It is 21Mbps shared among all the users on that cell, in big cities it will be next to useless.
I would rather go back to dial up than go back to Telstra. I don't care if they start teleporting information with quantum physics, I'd rather wait until iinet rolls it out.
Wonder if you guys have been to Copenhagen or Stockholm - 3 enabled 21 Mbit last month - hardware coming soon.
I've reached 5,8Mbps with a 7,2Mbps modem here in Gothenburg, so peaking 6Mbpds is not that extreme. Still, theoreticly, a very nice package from Telstra.
Everyone here in Australia knows that Telstra is a money grabbing, unreliable conglomerate.
They have great coverage, but god awful plans. Conversely, Optus has very fair plans, with absolutely atrocious coverage. 3 is probably the overall best, but lacks in customer service quality, and of course, the iPhone.
While everyone is bagging Telstra because of their cost, they are by far the most advanced wireless provider in Australia and amongst the top in the world.
They cover 2 million square kilometers (over 99% of the population) - hence the cost. People bragging about how their tiny EU country is getting
For AU $89 you get 5GB downloads (capped then slowed) in any tiny town or major highway in the country. I consistently get in excess of 6 Megabits per second using their 7.2 series hardware in cities, and around 3 Mbps in rural areas. They do not oversubscribe their network like their nearest competitor, Optus who cover less than half this area with download speed lucky to reach dialup speeds.
Yes I'm a Telstra fanboi, and I have been using this service since it was literally switched on for the entire country just over two years ago. No one comes close, you pay for a quality service.
It's not all about geography though and these tiny European countries that you're so quick to put down have populations that dwarf Australia's by comparison. It's just as difficult to provide fast internet access when you have massive contention ratios as it is to provide it over large distances. Despite this though, Australian ISPs all charge disproportionally more than the rest of the world and generally offer poorer products.
Why boast about the internet speeds in the country when nobody lives there to take advantage of it? The people living in cities (the majority of the population) are being held to ransom by farmers who have far more political clout than they deserve and money that could be spent providing a cheap, competitive, fast and unlimited service in the cities is wasted on farmers who are unlikely to even understand how to switch a computer on.
If you think that any company is providing good broadband access in Australia then I suggest you read Costas's comment above. Here in Europe and in the US online businesses are thriving. I can buy anything I need online and never have to waste my time going into a single shop. Compare that to Australia where you can buy very little online and most large retailers only have a very meagre online presence. Have a look at www.myers.com.au (Myers is one of the largest department stores in the country) and try and buy anything. You can't and it's a sad joke. It's even funnier when you go to websites like Dick Smiths to browse their catalogue (http://catalogues.dse.com.au/portal?sessionid=49c8cf7213fcf722273fc0a87e01070c). They've recreated the damned paper catalogue online for you to flick through from page to page because they think they're living in 1980. You might blame this on the individual retailers but it's all down to Telstra and the other ISPs and the rip-off products they offer.
Frankly, the idea that anyone could be a Telstra fanboy is pretty ridiculous.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to this country I live in. It's not all about providing coverage for these lowlife farmer scum you speak of, its about having coverage no matter where I decide to go, and along the way. Fact is I can get coverage along almost every major highway in the country for the vast majority of my journey.
I manage hundreds Next G connections with Telstra, it is easy to blanket a tiny country only a few hundred km wide with base stations (even if they are more concentrated), than it is to deploy 3,500 base stations over a 2,000,000 sqkm area running high speed fibre or microwave links between them all, and maintaining it. It takes over a day some times to get to some of these base station sites should repairs need to be made.
Now try tell me the cost of building, running and maintaining a network covering such a large area comes cheaply. Of course you get what you pay for.
I use this network on a daily basis and my business would not be the same without it. I am just getting on with business whilst the kiddies that can't get their parents to pay for decent wireless broadband put up with 3, Optus, or Virgins pathetic excuse. You will find these are the most vocal.
I can't really see your connection between ecommerce sites and a national broadband network that is the most techincally superior in the world.
I have 3's 7,2Mbit paying 199SEK ~ 40AUD with 20Gb limit/month.
pc only
epic fail
Covering more than 85pct of the market with one product. Sounds more like an epic win to me!
Backhaul was most likely the limit in speed.
Ah, forgot to add that network congestion played a part too....for some reason I was thinking it was an "Ideal" situation test, the kind where no one else was on the site.
Reason I am saying backhaul will play a limiting factor, I doubt Telstra forked out the cash to provide the 61mbit connect required for optimum performance to each site. This is kind of indicated in posts above me, stating that rural areas have slower speeds, mainly because even though congestion is a lot lower, there isn't as much backhaul.
I don't want to hear "But FIOS has X speed for only X much". Residential service/prices do not apply. If that were the case, then a T1 wouldn't be over 300 bucks with a 3yr contract, when you can get DSL that is 4 times faster for less than 100 bux in the same area.
This is just a Sierra Wireless modem with the latest firmware upgrade; nothing special - Go to their site, and you'll be able to see that all their stuff is firmware upgradable to 21Mbps
Im going to sue them becaue i'm not getting 21mbps.