This article is sponsored by Telstra.
In news that will surprise no one at all: Aussies love the internet. The average Australian household chews through a whopping 360GB of data each month and over three-quarters of our homes connect to the nbn® on either a 50Mbps or 100Mbps speed plan.
As we shift to faster NBN plans it's important to remember that you need a fast NBN modem too. Even when you’re paying for a faster service, older modems can easily become a bottleneck to blazing speeds in your home. Think of it like putting rocket fuel in an ancient Holden Kingswood. You’ll pay all of that money for supercharged fuel, but there’s only so much speed you can get out of that old engine.
Telstra’s new Smart Modem 3 is more of a Lamborghini than a Kingswood. It comes packed with the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology which delivers faster Wi-Fi speeds and a stronger signal, plus it has a built-in 4G SIM card to use as a backup in case of any outages (4G coverage required. Backup speeds capped at 25/5Mbps. Actual speeds my be lower).
And best of all, it comes bundled with all new Telstra Home Internet Plans.
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#1
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Telstra
All Fixed Line nbn®
Basic Internet Only Plan
$89/mth
Min. cost $44.50
Link not supplied
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#2
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Telstra
Basic Internet Only Plan (Fixed Wireless)
$89/mth
Min. cost $44.50
Link not supplied
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#3
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Telstra
All Fixed Line nbn®
Upfront Internet Plan Basic
$97/mth
Min. cost $48.50
Link not supplied
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#4
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Telstra
Upfront Internet Plan Basic (Fixed Wireless)
$97/mth
Min. cost $48.50
Link not supplied
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#5
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Telstra
FTTP, HFC
Premium Internet Only Plan
$99/mth
Min. cost $49.50
Link not supplied
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#6
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Telstra
Premium Internet Only Plan (Fixed Wireless)
$99/mth
Min. cost $49.50
Link not supplied
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#7
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Telstra
FTTN, FTTB, FTTC
Premium Internet Only Plan
$99/mth
Min. cost $49.50
Link not supplied
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#8
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Telstra
Essential Internet Only Plan (Fixed Wireless)
$99/mth
Min. cost $49.50
Link not supplied
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#9
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Telstra
FTTP, HFC
Upfront Internet Plan Premium
$113/mth
Min. cost $56.50
Link not supplied
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#10
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Telstra
Upfront Internet Plan Premium (Fixed Wireless)
$113/mth
Min. cost $56.50
Link not supplied
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Internet Jargon Buster
Before diving into the nitty gritty, here are a few key definitions you should know.
Modem vs Router: you may find people use these terms interchangeably, but this isn’t technically correct. The modem is the device that connects to the NBN and interprets the data. A router connects to the modem and shares the data with other devices, usually over Wi-Fi.
Gigabyte (GB): bits and bytes are the fundamental unit of data in computing, and a gigabyte is 1000 bytes. For reference, a movie rental from iTunes will typically be 5GB of data to download.
Mbps: megabits per second is the industry standard for describing speed, similar to the way we refer to kilometres per hour when we measure the speed we drive at.Wi-Fi 6: the speed you need in every room
Wi-Fi 6 is the latest Wi-Fi standard used in modems and routers today and there’s a few key benefits of having a modem/router with Wi-Fi 6 technology. As you might expect, it's capable of delivering faster speeds compared with older Wi-Fi 5 hardware. But it’s also much better at dealing with congestion for when you have loads of devices connected to your network at the same time.
With this new tech under the hood, the Telstra Smart Modem 3 is now 60 percent faster than Telstra’s previous Smart Modem, making it a must-have for anyone looking to switch to a better Wi-Fi experience.
According to Telstra, it’s also twice as fast as some of the modems you get from other Australian internet providers. In independently supervised testing, the Telstra Smart Modem 3 blazed past the competition.
Connecting more devices in more rooms
Faster speeds are great, but we also need a strong Wi-Fi signal in more rooms around the house. Long gone are the days when we’d huddle around the modem to connect to the internet. Parents are working in home offices, the kids are “studying” in their bedrooms. There’s a security camera connected in the back garden, and we can’t forget the loo tucked away in the laundry.
The Telstra Smart Modem 3 is ready to handle challenging household layouts and works hard to connect everyone, wherever in the house they need to be. Referring back to the independent testing we pointed to earlier, Telstra found that the Telstra Smart Modem 3 blanketed it’s four-bedroom test house far better than competitor modems.
There really is no comparison between the examples given; the Telstra Smart Modem 3 uses the Wi-Fi 6 hardware combined with innovative software to maximise coverage so that everyone can get online and do what they need to do.
One of the key tech enhancements in the new Wi-Fi standard is the ability to connect more devices to the network and for the Wi-Fi hardware to manage congestion and share the bandwidth effectively across the network.
To explain this simply, your Wi-Fi network is like a noisy classroom, where the Telstra Smart Modem 3 is an extremely patient teacher, and your laptops, smartphones, TVs and iPads are all rude students all screaming for attention at the same time. Some of the devices are streaming video, some are playing music, and others are connected to online video games.
Of course, we have more than just computers on our networks these days. We’re installing wireless security systems, doorbell cameras, smart light bulbs and voice-activated speakers. Your robot vacuum cleaner, fridge, washer and dryer may all be on the network too. As we add more smart devices to our homes, the need for better Wi-Fi increases exponentially.
Wi-Fi 6 makes it so that each device can be “heard” simultaneously and gets the data it’s requesting faster than is possible with older technology.
Superhero safety and support
The Telstra Smart Modem 3 is clearly a great device for sharing a fast NBN connection, but as we all know, the internet doesn’t always work as expected. Whether the problem is NBN related, hardware configurable or down to pesky hackers and viruses, the Telstra Smart Modem 3 is the crime fighting, bug squashing, tech guru you need to get back up and running.
Take an NBN outage for example. There’s a multitude of reasons why you might lose access to the internet, like network maintenance or a fault at the NBN node on your street. With most NBN providers a fault like this will leave you back in the dark ages, sometimes for hours or days. But the Telstra Smart Modem 3 has a built-in 4G wireless backup which activates during an outage and keeps your home online until the NBN service is restored (4G coverage required. Backup speeds capped at 25/5Mbps. Actual speeds my be lower).
If the issue is hardware related, the Telstra Smart Modem 3 has a SmartFix diagnostic feature that will run tests on your network to identify the issue and then try to resolve it for you. It’s like having a network technician living in your home, but without having to set an extra plate at the dinner table.
And And with enhanced built-in security, Telstra says that the Telstra Smart Modem 3 is its safest modem yet. Wi-Fi 6 combined with Telstra's ongoing software updates ensure security protocols are updated to address new threats.
How can you get the new Telstra Smart Modem 3?
The Telstra Smart Modem 3 is automatically included for use with all new Telstra Home Internet plans. If you leave before 24 months, simply return your modem or pay a $200 non-return fee. Existing Telstra internet customers with a Telstra Smart Modem 2 can upgrade to the new Smart Modem 3 for an extra $9 per month on their existing bill.
Joseph Hanlon
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