Testing Telstra 4G against the rest

More than 200,000 people have signed up for Telstra’s 4G network which was rolled out in Bunbury last December.

The South Western Times got its hands on one of the telco’s 4G dongles to test out its speeds around Bunbury.

The slim, white USB dongle generates some fantastic speeds around the centre ofBunbury with our test recording 13.41Mbps on downloads and 8.23Mbps on uploads, faster than most landline ADSL connections currently available in the area.

According to Telstra, 4G wireless broadband is capable of download speeds ranging from 2Mbps to 40Mbps which it says is up to five times faster than existing 3G networks accessed by the majority of wireless broadband users.

Tests on other telcos’ networks by the Times generated results which were significantly slower than the 4G tests with Optus coming in with a respectable 1.6Mbps on downloads while Vodafone managed 0.19Mbps in the city centre.

All three telcos struggled with Dalyellup’s coverage which has previously been slammed as patchy.

The Telstra dongle reverted to 3G service and could only manage 0.7Mbps while Optus and Vodafone achieved 0.12Mbps and 0.28Mbps respectively.

Telstra’s own coverage map shows decent coverage across most of the Greater Bunbury area with the exception of parts of Dalyellup.

Tests in other outlying areas of generated similar results with the Telstra service consistently ahead of both Optus and Vodafone which fluctuated.

The 4G network is avaible in most regional centres aroundWAincluding Albany, Broome, Geraldton, Esperance, Kalgoorlie and Karratha while the Perth CBD and Airport have been covered since last year.

Optus is currently trialling its 4G network in NSW while Telstra has plans to expand its network.

The South Western Times used bandwidth testing service speedtest.net to conduct all tests with speeds measured to a neutral server hosted by the WA Internet Association in Perth and all tests were conducted outdoors.