Telstra upgrade of backend increases speed

I don’t know if this has been posted elsewhere, but Telstra has recently upgraded their back end equipment. I think it happened sometime in the last month. It requires a reboot of your modem to take effect.
I am on a Telstra cable network (not yet NBN). Ran speed tests before rebooting modem consistently 35 MBS.
After the reboot of modem consistently 54 MBS. I don’t know if this applies to services other than non NBN cable but it is worth a try.

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Exactly the same for me. I’m on a Telstra cable plan (no NBN in my area yet) & they have just increased my speed from 35Mbps - 50Mbps - even higher outside of peak times…for free!
It’s not often Telstra does such a good job but WOW! I have to give them credit. Who needs NBN when I’ve got a reasonably reliable & consistent 50Mbps with very few issues.
I’m now hoping the NBN takes their time…maybe another year or longer.

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I doubt it was an equipment upgrade, but a smart business move by Telstra all the same. You guys on cable plans are getting a free tier upgrade just as the Telstra NBN customers got recently, and I’m guessing (probably cynically) that it’s a retail move to try and keep you guys with them when NBN hits your areas. It will work too, as lots of people will remember the last good thing they got free rather than past problems they actually payed for lol.

In the case of their NBN customers it was over 850,000 that got upgraded to Telstra’s Standard Plus (NBN 50) for free, which is a pretty good deal on the surface and makes Telstra look like it’s handing out late Christmas presents. That particular speed tier will be fine for most families - well for the next year or two at least. Under the new regulations they advertise the speeds for that tier as between 40-45mbps average download and 15mbps upload. In real terms this means the average user with a good connection (that’s FTTP) will average between 35-45mbps down and around 8-12mbps up. Of course this advertised speed is only to Australian sites, not anything that has to travel via the undersea cable network - although it’s only in the peak 7-11pm times you might notice a real difference between Oz & USA/Euro sites.

The interesting marketing situation with this though (and why I don’t think it’s Telstra getting a case of the warm & fuzzies) is the NBN technology mix and the new regulations. Now that ISP’s have to give more detail regarding their NBN speed tier packages and what the average expected speeds are at peak and non-peak times, they have to change things up. The vast majority of people who connect to the NBN in Australia will not be connecting via FTTP, which means Telstra and other ISP’s would not be able to reliably supply a service at any speed tier above NBN 25 to those customers. It’s hard to have a great competitive marketing spin when everyone has exactly the same product lol. People connecting via FTTN, FTTC, FTTB or HFC cannot be guaranteed a speed above 25mbps for more than 60% of their contract time due to the inherent problems in the technology mix. Sure they’ll reach higher speeds at times but under the new regulations they’ll be entitled to a refund if they do not get the maximum speed of their paid tier for 60% of the time.

How to fix that? Bump everyone up for free to a new lowest tier which is the NBN 50. Makes those that were paying for the NBN 25 tier feel all warm and gooey inside for Telstra (until their next mobile network outage that is lol), and those that were already on the NBN 50 won’t notice any difference to their service. That is of course as long as Telstra pays for the extra bandwidth now that they have 850.000 people who will be using their internet a heap more lol. They’ll bump up the price of the NBN 50 speed tier within 6 months anyway, but by that time they’ll have a lot more happy Telstra customers than their was a month ago - barring outages or own goals lol.

They had a similar marketing event last year or the year before when they upped their customer’s data allowances (doubled in most cases I think). From memory that was timed shortly before an NBN Co announcement of a large amount of premises getting connected faster then previously thought. Could of been a coincidence though as Telstra would have no idea when NBN Co were rolling past houses at any given time :stuck_out_tongue:.

It’s still a big win for cable customers as some of them might not have NBN roll past for years yet, and a free jump in speed from 35 to 50mbps download is great. Better still for those customers is the free speed boost on uploads from 1mbps to 5mbps - that’s what will make a bigger difference to home and small business users. Have to give Telstra credit for deciding to roll out a smart gateway modem for NBN customers too - won’t work in all areas but having an almost instant wireless backup service if your wired NBN goes out will be a selling point for quite a few people. If you have your modem backed up by UPS or other battery you can still use your home data for laptops, Ipad’s and phones instead of mobile data in a blackout.

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Some is equipment upgrades. Telstra are increasing their national & overseas fibre rollout, particularly as it relates to their business fibre packages on their non NBN fibre network. This has led to flow on benefits to their household fibre & Coax Velocity users. I think this is why they are seeing these speed improvements to a large degree.

Sure the package upgrade pays dividends in user satisfaction and retention just like the doubling of data limits did. When you got a 500 GB package that went to 1 TB or you went unlimited it seemed like a great thing and if you had been a grafted on Telstra user it really was. Just most RSPs had been selling unlimited packages for a long time before that but Telstra had been happy to make money off the reselling access on the old copper network while not really doing much for their own residential users.

NBN Co bought that copper for ughhh FTTN FTTC & FTTB so Telstra no longer could profit from that copper market. Instead they had to actually innovate the products they had to produce the share prices and dividends their investors rightfully demand.

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That is interesting regarding the speed for HFC as I just looked at the NBN website and apparently that is how we will get the NBN if it ever gets here that is.
Our local member told us we where getting it be late last year but nothing happened and I guess it was because they stopped installing HFC.
It will be interesting here though has I just lost both phone and internet for 14 days with Optus apparently someone, I think a Telstra technician disconnected my service at the exchange, many calls to Optus resulted in a phone technician turned up here put his little gadget in the wall and went away for 10 minutes returned and I had phone, he assumed I’d also have internet but turned out he connected my line too an old phone line that the internet wouldn’t’ work on one with a booster to give me better phone calls etc, another technician this time internet technician turned up told me I didn’t have nay internet coming through which I already knew and told Optus this, then 4 days later a Telstra technician turned up did some more testing went off to the exchange for 40 minutes to find my line, and back he came and everything was okay, the only thing that refused to work was my WiFi modem which I had bought 3 years ago and Optus said it was faulty but if what you are saying is true that would explain what happened, anyway that got returned to JB HiFi as I had an extended warranty, now I’m old school with an Optus modem that is 7 years old and no WiFi.
Our exchange is so old that I am wondering if the NBN will ever be successful here as they are going to be using copper stuff that hasn’t been replaced since the ark.

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Don’t quote me as I can’t be certain of what is going on with the old exchanges but I’d hazard an educated guess that as the roll out happens the equipment in those old copper exchanges will be getting swapped out or bypassed. You would have no-one getting decent speeds on the internet if it was hitting copper exchanges between fibre hubs - the same problems would be applying to everyone that are showing to be the case for those connected via fibre to the node. The only difference would be the slowdown would happen at the exchange level not the local nodes - someone like me with FTTP couldn’t get the reliable faster speeds I get if the connection was through a copper exchange before changing over to fibre again for the journey to my house. I could be totally wrong though, if the data only has a short internal journey through a copper exchange it might not have a large effect for the end user - I’m just guessing after all :slight_smile:

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Sounds plausible obbigttam, I know they put those boxes in a street over the hill from me when they got the NBN last year, but they seem to be having a lot off problems with the connections there and am hoping that if and when it comes here all the bugs have been sorted out but am not confident ans even the old copper wire they use here hasn’t even been looked at for years it will be interesting times for a lot off us.

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The exchanges have fibre backhaul and most have had this for a very long time. I guess some could still have copper trunk but I don’t think it would be many if any at all. When ADSL is cut off in an area the wires etc at the exchanges are certainly cut off and in time will be removed completely. I would guess that all the copper no longer used in conduit will eventually be pulled out both to make more room in the pipes and also to recover the scrap value.

A very important part of the NBN rollout and what led to what some saw as a rollout delay was to also create the NBN fibre backbone that connects all the POIs (mostly the old exchanges) together. This is partly what Malcolm capitalised on in his push to say the NBN was delayed. Once that backbone was created the rest of the rollout was able to proceed at speed but by then MT and Co had got in and we had MTM NBN delivered (well not so much delivered as lumped on us) and which has not really proceeded at speed due to all the issues with Coaxial and old copper in streets.

Some exchanges did not get digital refurbishment as quickly as others did but even for DSLAM boxes around the nation most have fibre backhaul, they certainly do for those that received “tophats” and Telstra put in place a lot of fibre backhaul due to their still ongoing investment in their own fibre network (think Velocity).

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Thanks for the exchange info @grahroll, nice to know the roll out isn’t a complete balls up lmao.

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Same here in Thornlands QLD. My cable has been a solid 35 for years, except when Telstra gave me their top speed free for 2 months and I was getting 115. So now my cable connection is getting a solid 57 most of the time and a 5 upload. I was afraid to say anything just in case it was an error. My son is changing to cable but will have to wait 3 weeks for it to happen. In the mean time they turned off his ADSL! That is really helpful. But the best they got on ADSL was 8. And they were only 2Klm away. But that is better than my brother-in-law who lives 3Klm from me in the other direction and he can only get 2 on ADSL.

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