LTE now, NBN when?

Stan Beer
Thursday, 17 February 2011 17:58

Opinion and Analysis

So much nonsense has been written about the so-called 4G versus NBN debate that it seems that everyone except some serious telecoms pundits have overlooked a key fact - the NBN is still years away.  Therefore, the debate is really 4G versus DSL, a debate that looks to start heating up very soon.

It is a touch ironic that the latest news to come out of NBNCo is its $120 million acquisition of spectrum from satellite TV provider Austar so that it can provide 12Mbps wireless services for 10% of Australians that won't get fibre.

As for the other 90% of us, let's not keep our eyes peeled for the fibre layers coming down our street anytime soon.

For the next five years or so, a question many of us are going to be faced with is should we stick with our DSL or even our cable internet service or should we give 4G wireless a try.

In fact, many are already asking that question given the reasonably acceptable coverage and performance that Telstra's NextG network provides. However, LTE offers a quantum leap in terms of performance above even HSPA+ 3G.

To get an idea of what to realistically expect from a commercial LTE connection there is an excellent video that a reader kindly posted to our site. In heavily populated areas of Sweden and Norway, users of Telia's LTE service are getting typical download speeds of 20Mbps and upload speeds of 5Mbps.

That's right, the first generation of LTE - never mind LTE Advanced - can provide comparable performance to high end DSL and cable.

Of course the naysayers will trot out the line that LTE is a shared wireless service and therefore performance will degrade under heavy use. True, that's probably why users in Stockholm are only getting 20Mbps instead of 100Mbps, although admittedly it is unknown how many users are on that particular network.

CONTINUED