Telstra today announced a duo of significant upgrades for mobile customers, launching both Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and new network enhancements capable of download speeds up to 600Mbps.
Both are pretty techy news items, and will take a bit of tech-iness to explain, but bear with us: both are a pretty big deal.
Firstly, VoLTE. This network upgrade paves the way for two great things for phone users; higher quality calling and faster data transmission while you’re on the phone. Essentially, VoLTE means that calls are placed using the newer 4G networks, rather than older 3G networks. You might not be aware of this, but when you make a call on a 4G phone now, it automatically switches your network mode to 3G until you hang up.
By launching VoLTE, Telstra gives its customers faster data while on a call, so you can quickly browse Maps, book a restaurant or look up movie times during the call with the person you are making plans with. It has even greater application for business users who use smartphones to remotely collaborate with colleagues.
Beyond data, calls on the 4G network give Telstra room to improve the quality of calls, with higher bitrate streams transmitting the audio data, making for clearer sounding calls.
Telstra says it is rolling out the new feature to Postpaid customers with compatible phones, though this list is short at the moment. Anyone who has picked up a new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 or Galaxy S6 Edge+ will be first to trial VoLTE, with new Sony phones coming soon.
More Speed Than You Need?
The second part of Telstra’s big news day is the one that will likely blow your mind. If you didn’t think the internet could get to you much faster than it already does, Telstra is launching a new WiFi Hotspot modem capable of downloading data at up to 600Mbps. To put this into perspective, 600Mbps is 24-times faster than the best ADSL2+ speeds, and 6-times faster than the best speeds you’ll see on the NBN.
Of course, there are a number of variables that will likely prevent you from ever actually seeing 600Mbps speeds, but this does make the new Telstra WiFI 4GX Advanced III modem the fastest by a wide margin (and the modem with the most unnecessarily long name to boot).
To achieve this, Telstra has upgraded parts of its network to support to Category 11 LTE, a world’s first. The footprint of this upgrade is restricted to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra for now, but you can be sure Telstra will roll this out further in the near future.
So, the only thing you need to figure out is what you’ll use 600Mbps downloads for. When Netflix recommends a 1.5Mbps connection for video streaming, it is hard to imagine what help the extra speed will be. Of course, this is what is exciting about it too. The future is on our doorstep, and now it is time for the geniuses in their garages to step up with tomorrow’s hot new online tools.
Super Highway image via Shutterstock
Joseph Hanlon
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