Telstra can now deliver Gigabit — that is 1000 megabits per second wireless downloads and a very respectable 150Mbps upload — via the 4GX LTE network in the central business district of Sydney. The service will be rolled out to other capital cities soon.
This is not the rumoured 20Gbps 5G that most of the modern world will not see until the early- or mid-2020s. But it is a foundational step, as some of the technology such as 256-QAM and 4 x 4 MIMO are the basis of 5G.
Telstra’s group managing director of networks, Mike Wright, was bullish about this interim step. “There has been an 85% growth in wireless (broadband) traffic over the past decade. There will be a similar increase over the next five years and higher bandwidth like video streaming is the driver. That means 80% of the capacity has yet to be built.”
There is also a catch to Gigabit LTE – until the release of the NETGEAR M1 Nighthawk mobile router in March (see separate iTWire article here) and the general use of Qualcomm’s new X16 LTE modem and Snapdragon 835 SoC (both later in 2017) there won’t be any devices capable of attaining the speed.
Ericsson is providing the physical backhaul networks to make mobile 4GX a reality.
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The demonstration was impressive – using the NETGEAR M1 Nighthawk, a Windows notebook consistently achieved over 900Mbps download and 80-100Mbps upload while simultaneously uploading a video stream of the event. To make doubly sure there was no “fudging”, the demonstration used the Ookla Speedtest.net and selected a non-Telstra endpoint server.
Each of the guest speakers had a similar message. Gigabit LTE is the stepping stone for 5G – and it is not 4.5G! Gigabit LTE will help improve current LTE speeds for all users and it is part of Telstra investing in the future and developing future use cases.
Mike Finley, Qualcomm’s senior vice-president for North America and Australia, said that it was not just smartphones but use cases like autonomous cars, drones, virtual and augmented reality that would benefit more. “With Gigabit LTE we have exceeded the speed that your home Ethernet/Wi-Fi network, or even reading data from a flash drive, can provide. This will enable true cloud computing where data, content, and apps need not be on the device. It is one of the next mobile disruptors until true 5G comes in the 2020s.”
Finley also mentioned other uses: “Campers, caravaners, domestic renters, mobile road warriors, temporary office sites, Ethernet failback and rollover, these are some of the technologies that will immediately benefit from Gigabit LTE.”
“Gigabit LTE is also an important step on our journey to 5G and demonstrates Telstra’s commitment to delivering Australians a world-class network now and into the future. We are well placed to evolve our 4G network and are putting the building blocks in place for Australia to be ready for 5G – this will deliver more bandwidth and lower latencies which are critical for emerging applications such as downloading 4K video, IoT, autonomous vehicles, augmented reality and shared virtual reality,” said Wright.
But there is another catch – the cost per gigabyte. Telstra pre-paid currently sells 1GB of data for $100 and Gigabit LTE will chew up that $100 in under 10 seconds.
While Wright did talk of driving the cost per bit down, not one speaker mentioned end-user costs. A panel session later inferred that Gigabit LTE was a premium product that had to be paid for (the cost of infrastructure investment) but costs would come down over time, just as the capability would flow down from premium smartphones to mid-range and eventually low-cost smartphones.