HTC Velocity: Australia’s first 4G phone is fast, 39.85Mbps fast
Posted Monday, January 23, 2012 at 5:34 pm by Jason Cartwright
Android-focused site Ausdroid has got hands on with Australia’s first 4G phone, the HTC Velocity. Sure there’s been 4G hotspots and USB dongles before that run on Telstra’s 4G network, but this is the first phone. With all the other componentry inside a phone it was difficult to tell what speeds would be possible.
The answer is 32.82Mbps down and 11.2Mbps up. The post is correctly disclaimed with ‘your mileage may vary’, but still, it’s an impressive number. Why you would need mobile data that fast is another question. Naturally as more people move from 3G to 4G, the network congestion will increase and speeds will inevitably slow. This may be one instance where being an early adopter yields good benefits.
The only bad thing about this result is that it was done on a new device that will ship without Ice Cream Sandwich.
Update
Trevor Long just posted a photo on twitter with an even better result – 39.85 Mbps down and 11.88 Mbps. Clearly he was a little closer to the tower with a 39ms ping vs 127ms.
Galaxy Nexus officially coming to Telstra
Posted Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 7:36 am by Jason Cartwright
This morning Telstra has officially confirmed the Samsung Galaxy Nexus will be coming to their network. One of the fastest phones is set to be on the fastest network in Australia from tomorrow (select stores). The phones go on-sale at Telstra’s flagship stores in Melbourne and Sydney tomorrow, as well as selling direct via their online store.
This is the first Android 4.0 (Ice cream sandwich) device to be launched in Australia and on Telstra. The Galaxy Nexus will also be sold on Optus and Vodafone.
Pricing is fairly standard for smart phones today, ranging from $69pm for the small 1.5GB plan up to $129pm for the 3GB XL plan. No real shockers here.
BigPond security issue takes email, accounts offline for 24 hours
Posted Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 3:08 pm by Jason Cartwright
Thousands of BigPond customers are currently locked out of their accounts after a security issue was discovered almost 24 hours ago. Yesterday afternoon users began discovering that a publically accessible URL was available and indexed by Google. This meant that details of tens of thousands of customers may have had their information compromised. At this stage it is believed the breach exposed the usernames and passwords of those customers on a BigPond Bundle package.
As a precaution, Telstra have pulled account services and email access for all customers, lasting for almost 24 hours. Telstra say they hope to have services back online later this afternoon, but when Australia’s largest internet provider have issues, naturally the public are in an outrage.
Telstra are taking to social media to deal with customer complaints about the downtime, using twitter to keep users up to date on service downtime. Most of the tweets today have been apologies to angry customers, right now you couldn’t pay me to be part of that team.
BigPond are reported to be resetting the passwords of affected users (myself included), but as a precaution you should reset your password once services are back online.
Update
Services have been restored for most users, although judging from the level of conversation on twitter, quite a few are still experiencing issues and are being advised to call the support number.
Watch for updates at http://twitter.com/Telstra
More info @ SMH.
Telstra browsing packs (data blocks) for Mobiles
Posted Friday, December 2, 2011 at 10:23 am by Jason CartwrightFor years we’ve had the ability to purchase additional data blocks on home internet (some providers), now that’s available for mobiles. If you have ever gone over your allocated amount of data in a month, you’ll know that carriers charge like a wounded bull. While there’s still no speed shaping option like home internet, but now you do have a choice.
Telstra have now added the ability to purchase Browsing Packs or Data Blocks for your mobile plan. Prices start at $5/m for an additional 30Mb, but things start to get interesting at $10/m for an additional 1GB of data. The options go like this..
If you’re a data hungry demon, then the top end of $69/m for an extra 12GB is actually a pretty good deal all things considered. There is one condition for purchasing these Browsing Packs, that is, you need to have a mobile on an eligible post-paid plan.
More information @ Telstra
Get early access to the My Telstra iPhone app
Posted Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 5:02 pm by Jason Cartwright
Telstra have announced today that a new iPhone app is on the way. The My Telstra app will allow Telstra customers to access important information about their accounts. Everything from checking data usage, to paying your bills and even recharging right from the app will be on offer.
While many Telstra customers have found their ways to 3rd party apps to monitor usage, there’s no other app that has offered this many features for your Telstra services. From the list of service icons in the screen shot provided, it seems any of your Telstra services will be supported, Mobile, home broadband, home phone etc.
Don’t bother searching the App Store for My Telstra app, you won’t find it. Right now they are after people to help them test and flush out the bugs. This likely means less than 100 people as per Apple developer agreements.
Today, we‘re looking for a group of digital thought leaders and power users (and Telstra customers…) who are interested in getting the new app before anyone else and sharing their feedback with us and we are calling this group the ‘Digital Customer Circle’.
For more information about the My Telstra app and to sign up for early access, check out Telstra Exchange.
iPhone 4S not even ordered.. Switching to Telstra after 10 years on Optus could not be harder. This is bullshit customer service.
Posted Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:59 pm by Jason Cartwright
First off, I never swear in posts, so hopefully that gives you a scale of how annoyed I am right now.
After 10 years on Optus, I have had enough. Telstra seriously didn’t need to do much to get my business, but the experience has been an absolute joke. Below is a timeline of my nightmare experience of trying to switch to Telstra. Remember this is an effort to sign a 2 year contract that would net them at least $2,000 on top of the home phone and internet I already pay. As history would evidence, I tend to stick to a carrier once I’m there, so there’s potentially a lot more on offer if they look after me with good customer service.
September 27th – The day Telstra’s expression of interest page went live, I signed up immediately to get the latest news like a good little potential customer.
October 5th – Rose at 3am to watch the iPhone 4S be officially unveiled by Apple.
October 8th – Signed up as soon as Telstra’s pre-order page went live.
October 12th – Went to the local Telstra store in Wodonga, was told I would receive a call on launch day. I made a point of letting them know I’m switching to Telstra after 10 years with Optus.. i.e. Look after me, but got no call. (This from the same store who botched my first attempt to move to Telstra only a few months ago). I was told that my best chance of obtaining an iPhone 4S as soon as possible was using the online pre-orders.
October 13th – I was called by Telstra to confirm my licence details and the order before it could proceed. I enquired if going to the store would be a faster way of landing an iPhone 4S, but was told proceeding with the online pre-order was indeed the fastest way. I was told I was ‘in the first batch’.
October 14th – iPhone 4S goes on sale, during the day I heard from a number of friends that local stores in Albury Wodonga did indeed have stock. At this point, I felt locked into the online process and frustrated that I’d been specifically told twice in the past 2 days that I was indeed using the best method available to secure a device. I avoided rushing to the retail store to vent my frustration as I wanted to avoid another screw-up that could potentially result in signing up to 2 contracts for the iPhone 4S. Since then I’ve read on the Telstra forums that this indeed has happened to a number of Telstra customers.
October 17th – With no communication over the weekend, I enquired about the status of my order today via twitter, then online form as directed. Others had received shipping emails to let them know their phone wasn’t far away, but I had received nothing since the verification call. Tonight I received an email to let me know, not that my phone would reach me soon, but the order hasn’t even been processed.
Dear Jason,
Firstly, it’s great to hear that you will be upgrading your handset with Telstra to the iPhone 4S and would be more than happy to assist further with an update on your order.
I can appreciate your frustrations with the delay that you have experienced in receiving an update on how your order is tracking at the present time and apologise for any inconvenience that this has caused you. I can confirm that we have received your online order and this has been assigned to one of my colleagues to have the order finalised and verified for you. They should be in contact with you very soon to have this order completed correctly in the system allowing the device to be sent out. We have received such a large demand for these handsets that has lead to some delays in processing the orders, but we are trying to have them completed as quickly as possible and not have any errors with these orders as well.
Once again I am sorry for the delay, and if you have not heard anything within 48 hours of this email being received please reply and I will have this escalated to my manager to see what we can have completed to speed up this process.
Best Regards,
Dingo
Social Media Team
www.telstra.com
Business rule number one people, do not make it hard for people to give you money ! Apologising for any inconvenience has become an obnoxious excuse for incompetence. It does not excuse the fact this has been a horrible experience. At this point I’m ready to say forget the whole thing.
Update
I have now cancelled the order.
Update 2
I now have an iPhone 4S on Telstra. Shortly after this post went up, a GM at Telstra reached out to me and appologised profusely for the experience I had. We discussed how they could modify business practices to avoid this type of experience from happening to anyone else. I’m glad my complaints were finally heard and real action is being taken to improve things. As compensation they offered (and I accepted) a 64GB iPhone 4S for the price of the 32GB. The local store in Wodonga also threw in a case.
