Telstra is the world’s first mobile network to crack the 1000Mbps download speed barrier over 4G, and it’s using this little gadget from Netgear to get there.
Netgear’s Nighthawk M1 router — the company’s first to use the same name as its high-end Wi-Fi products — uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X16 LTE chipset, and achieves download speeds of up to 1000Mbps through 4-band carrier aggregation, using four of Telstra’s five separate 700MHz, 900MHz 1800MHz, 2100MHz and 2600MHz frequency holdings and 4×4 MIMO antennas for multiple upload and download streams simultaneously.
Telstra originally promised to deliver 1000Mbps mobile downloads by the end of 2016, but narrowly missed its window with this late January launch. Australia’s largest mobile network uses Ericsson 4G infrastructure and announced concrete plans for gigabit 4G in October of last year, and said it would run more internal tests before opening the network up to the public.
The Nighthawk M1 is a portable 4G router, but includes a built-in Ethernet network port as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi for extremely fast local networking to smartphones or laptops, supporting up to 20 connected devices concurrently. It also has a regular USB port and USB Type-C connector for charging and media streaming. Netgear says the M1’s battery will last for up to 24 hours of continuous use.
Telstra previously announced another fastest-ever (at the time) 4GX hotspot in the Netgear AirCard 810S, which was capable of 600Mbps downloads. In reality, on a relatively busy 4G network and competing with hundreds or thousands of other devices on each network cell, real-world download speeds were between half and one third of the theoretical maximum in testing. If the same holds true of the Nighthawk M1, expect 400-500Mbps download speeds in full Telstra network coverage areas.
In the future, the M1 can act as a base station for Netgear’s wireless, battery-powered Arlo security cameras. The features can be controlled through the redesigned Netgear Mobile app, which includes security and parental controls.
Telstra has always been one of the world’s most technically advanced mobile telcos, pouring significant investment from its time as a government-owned entity and successive privatisation into building a nationwide 3G network which it called NextG. The telco refers to its high-speed 4G network as 4GX, and uses carrier aggregation across multiple bands to increase download and upload speeds. It also sits on the steering committee for 5G.
The Netgear Nighthawk M1 (MR1100) will be available through Telstra on a range of 4GX plans from next month, and will also be able to be purchased outright for $360.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo
Comments
13 responses to “Telstra Breaks The 1000Mbps Barrier With A Netgear 4G Modem”
If only they’d put in the same investment into their copper network….
Didn’t they sell that to the government?
I believe so.
Only in townships. I live 2KM from a town that has VDSL (FTTN). Of cause I can’t get it and I’m still using the Telstra copper network on ADSL2. Because I am out of the township the copper network can not be taken away from me, even if I get crappy NBN wireless.
Sweet now you can blow through your 5gb cap at record pace!
40 seconds at gigabit speeds.
Frankly that seems a bit irresponsible [not the speed, but the ludicrously low data caps]. Imagine connecting up a device performing auto updates or syncing….. 40 seconds isn’t a lot of time to notice it was taking place. You could very easily blow through your allocated data [or a huge portion of it], without noticing.
Now create plans for $90 per month with a 500GB download limit and I’ll use it for my PC.
That plan is not 1000gb for $90 if you sign/resign via the website.
But I agree, I’d love to have that deal using that modem.
It’s beautiful
http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/319/files/2016/12/Krennic-IMAX-Rogue-One-TV-Spot.jpg
And this is what we are going to have to buy if we ever want fast internet in this country, over priced with limited data caps.
Win/Win for Telstra and their Coalition shareholers
Can you really say they’ve broken a particular barrier if they just reached the barrier and stopped?
Telstra are one of the most advanced? Their mobile network has serious issues that no other network in Australia has.
When a new Android version comes out, it runs fine on every network in the world except Telstra who block it for ages.
Telstra don’t block any handsets from connecting to their networks. As long as your device operates on the same frequencies, you’re all set.
I will be clearer. They block the updates from downloading to your phone. Bought it from Google, Kogan, Tesltra or wherever, if you have a Telstra SIM, no update for you. Pop in a sim from any other provider and ZING – update available.
10MB/s at $10 a gigabyte thats 10 dollars every 100 seconds
pull the other f\/ckw17 tel$tra
I hear about this cool router, meanwhile Telstra hasn’t supplied us with our internet access for 4 weeks since we made a complaint, and they have replied once with a very out-of-depth response basically asking us to bring this to a higher-up. No response. WE have contacted them repeatedly, and been kept in the dark for most of the 4 weeks. Telstra should first provide good service and support to their customers rather than investing in such devices. Prioritisation would be appreciated. I do like the idea of this router, but what the hell you need internet in the first place.