Telstra Launches 1Gbps 4G LTE Network in Australia

Telstra, an Australian telecommunications carrier, has announced its 1Gbps 4G mobile network in the country. The Wi-Fi hotspot will offer compatible devices download speeds of up to 1Gbps. The company in partnership with Netgear, Ericsson, and Qualcomm has also launched a mobile router that will support the new 1Gbps download speeds and also come with 150Mbps upload speeds.

Telstra announced the new mobile network at the Gigabit LTE event in Sydney and confirmed the availability of the new 1Gbps 4G mobile network in three cities including Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney. At the event, Telstra confirmed expansion of the 1Gbps 4G mobile network to Adelaide and Perth by later this year.

In the meanwhile, the Netgear Nighthawk M1 Mobile Router MR1100 was officially launched, and features 4x carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO (multiple input multiple output), and 256-QAM boosting Wi-Fi throughput to over 1Gbps. The MR1100 will operate on Telstra's Gigabit LTE network, which is enabled by Ericsson. The Nighthawk M1 router will go on sale from late February in Australia and will be available via Telstra stores and online channels. It has been priced at AU$360 (roughly Rs. 18,500) upfront. Notably, the Nighthawk M1 mobile hotspot will utilise 60MHz of spectrum with four band carrier aggregation. The device will come with an Ethernet port and 2 USB ports. The device can be connected with up to 20 Wi-Fi devices at one time. It packs a 5040mAh battery, and Netgear claims up to 24 hours of use.

Telstra's Channa Seneviratne, Director of Wireless Engineering, talking about the new 1Gbps mobile network (via ZDNet) said, "The Gigabit network itself will be rolled out initially in the CBDs, and it will gradually expand from there, but that will occur over time. Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane already have got sites that are gigabit-capable, and this calendar year we will also introduce that to Perth and Adelaide." Telstra also revealed plans to upgrade its standard LTE speeds up to 400Mbps by fiscal year 2019.

To recall, Qualcomm in collaboration with Ericsson, Netgear, and Telstra last year announced the MR100 router, with the 14nm Snapdragon X16 (LTE Cat. 16) modem.