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At launch Telstra is offering LTE coverage within 5km of the GPO of all state and territory capitals and some 30 regional locations - some 40 percent of the population, according to Telstra. By year end it will have extended coverage to 80 regional locations and says that, beyond this, network expansion will be demand-driven.
In regional locations Telstra is promising coverage over a 3km radius from town centres. Outside LTE coverage areas the modem cuts over (Telstra does not like to use 'falls back') to HSPA+, which is enabled throughout its Next G network: a claimed 99 percent of the population and 2.1m square kilometres. Coverage details are available at www.telstra.com/mobilebbcoverage
As with previous network upgrades Telstra is giving only a broad indication of the bandwidth that customers can expect: between 2Mbps and 40Mbps downstream - double that claimed for its HSPA+ service and between 1Mbps and 10 Mbps upstream - three times that of HSPA+. It says that latency will be between 30 and 40ms: half that of HSPA+.
iTWire tested the service in Sydney and obtained downstream bandwidths of between 10Mbps and 11.5Mbps depending on the server used. Upstream was over 4Mbps and latency to a Sydney server 38ms.
The only device available at launch is a USB dongle from Sierra Wireless that looks identical to the current Ultimate device, except that it is black. For business customers it is known as the Telstra USB 4G and for consumers, the BigPond USB 4G.
Telstra's director of network & commercial planning, Anthony Goonan, said the company would offer an HTC LTE capable smartphone in the first half of 2012, along with an LTE tablet. An LTE WiFi hotspot is also in the pipeline but he would give no firm indication of timing.
Pricing is identical to the current HSPA+ mobile broadband service. For consumers, BigPond plans start at $39.95 per month for 1GB on a 24 month contract rising to $99.95 for 15GB. However all plans can be discounted by up to $20 if customers take sufficient other services from Telstra. Month-by-month options are not available, expect for prepay customers to whom LTE is not yet available. The dongle is charged at $0 on 24 month contracts.
Telstra's LTE dongle comes with connection software for Mac and Windows preloaded. Once inserted into the USB port on a computer the installer launches and invites the user to install the software. On a Mac it is fairly straightforward - except that the installer asks you to open the network preferences panel and make some changes. There is no mention of this in the user guide.
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Telstra's LTE service operates at 1800MHz. Optus has also announced plans to launch LTE at 1800MHz but earlier this month announced plans to trial LTE at 700MHz. Goonan declined to be drawn as to when, or even whether, Telstra intended to do likewise. "Today is about the launch of our 1800MHz LTE network," he said. He did, however suggest that significant expansion of the LTE network beyond the 80 regional locations would not happen until additional spectrum becomes available.
"What is most likely is that we will add the [1800MHz] technology where capacity is required but it is unlikely to be wide area rollout. Remember that or 3G HSPA+ network [which covers 99 percent of the population] is our wide area foundation," he said.
And he stressed that the decision to introduce LTE was only partly to enable Telstra to offer a higher speed service. "One of the key reasons we are introducing this technology is to get additional capacity into the network'¦The demand on the 3G network is doubling approximately aver 12 months and we are investing between $300m and $400m every year to increase capacity."
