Telstra AND Optus are reporting slower typical evening speeds for no caps 5G home internet planscompared to previous months.
Telstra’s advertised evening download speeds dropped last week from 336Mbps to 291Mbps and uploads from 44Mbps to 35Mbps.
Optus had a similar reduction at the end of April – the typical evening download speed for its uncapped Entertainer Superfast 5G plan dropped from 240Mbps to 210Mbps, although upload speeds didn’t move.
These drops only affected each provider’s uncapped 5G home internet plans, not the cheapest ones home wireless plan tiers with maximum download speeds of 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps.
WhistleOut reached out to both phone companies to find out the reason for the reported speed drop.
Telstra’s decline doesn’t actually reflect a change in its customers’ experience. Instead, telecommunications identified a flaw in its 5G modems that reported incorrect speed data back to base. The telco believes it has now fixed the modem bug and has begun the process of notifying its customers.
However, Optus’ new figures reflect a real-world drop in the typical evening speeds it collected during its quarterly check. An Optus spokesperson told WhistleOut that these reports can vary based on a number of factors, including the time of year and the type of modems used by the group of customers surveyed.
Most Optus 5G home internet customers use an older modem (the Nokia FastMile 5G Gateway), which the telco previously included with its plans. But when Optus capped the results for customers using the new Optus Ultra 5G WiFi modem, download performance often exceeded the previous 240Mbps typical evening download speeds. The telco expects to see its typical speed figures improve as more new customers sign up and get the latest 5G modem.
As alternatives to the NBN go, 5G home internet is one of the best and most available options. Pound for pound, you can potentially get better speeds for a cheaper price versus the NBN – depending on coverage in your area and a number of other factors, such as network congestion, which wireless internet is more susceptible to sensitive than most landline NBN connections.
Plans are typically divided into three speed tiers, with maximum download speeds of 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps and no cap. The first two are comparable to NBN 50 AND 100 NBN plansrespectively, and there are many providers and plans to choose from.
Internet plans without 5G coverage at home are closer 250 NBN plans in terms of speed, but not necessarily in price. But there are far fewer options to choose from.
Here are the uncapped 5G home internet plans from popular providers, ranked by lowest cost over the first 12 months:
Even with the difference in reported speeds, Telstra not only remains the provider with the fastest typical evening uncovered speeds (by a significant margin), but is also the cheapest in the long run.
The main potential drawback is the 1TB monthly download allowance – versus the unlimited downloads of others. But 1 TB is a lot of data to burn through in a month. For the most part, this will only affect very large households or people with massive download requests.
The next cheapest and fastest 5G home internet plan is from SpinTel. Over 12 months, it works out to be $127 more expensive than Telstra’s – and that includes an introductory discount for the first three months on SpinTel’s plan.
If you’re wondering how these 5G uncapped internet plans compare to the NBN, you can check out some of our cheapest base NBN 100 and NBN 250 plans below, ranked by price over the first 12 months:
#Telstra #Optus #quietly #drop #evening #speeds #home #internet
Image Source : www.whistleout.com.au
Leave a Reply