BigPond Ultimate, Telstra’s “world first” fastest mobile Wi Fi promises to be just that.
BigPond Ultimate Wi-Fi hotspot, which goes on sale this week, is Australia’s “fastest mobile Wi-Fi” Telstra says. So can it live up to expectations?
The small, black fit-in-your-palm box allows you to connect up to 5 devices at any one time, with download speeds between 1.1Mbps – 20Mbps, and the dual carrier Wi-Fi is “world first” and easy to use, the telco promises.
There’s half an hour less active battery life on this slightly heftier unit than Telstra’s ‘Elite’ mobile Wi-Fi, but it more than doubles the maximum download speeds. Uploads of 300kbps to 3Mbps haven’t changed though.
However, the faster speeds are confined to all capital city CBDs and “selected” regional areas only, meaning if your living or working in an ‘unselected’ location these speeds won’t be any use.
Ultimate boasts a 4.5″ LCD screen, HSPA+ dual carrier mode and will display signal strength, mode (3G or dual carrier), the number of devices are currently attached, and will run non stop for 3.5 hours (100 hrs standby).
The “hero product” took 6 months to go to market and is designed for post paid business users, home office or everyday household use as the number of 3G smartphones and iPads proliferate.
Cost wise, it will set you back $49 (on rebate) on a 24 month 1GB data BigPond broadband plan. Fixed line customers can also avail a discount if they wish to get their mitts on the high speed Wi-Fi.
Telstra guru Michael Lewis put the Ultimate to the test – using four 3G devices simultaneously – an iPad, iPhone, Motorola Xoom tab and Atrix Android smartphone, to see if it could handle the pressure.
Lewis downloaded a series of free applications from the Android Market for the Atrix, while checking email on the Xoom, watched YouTube video on the iPad and but upgraded 10 applications on the iPhone.
“I was amazed the Ultimate held it all together,” he wrote on Telstra Exchange blog.
Hmm, although it sounds good, we’ll have to wait and see for other independent verdicts of Ultimate before our minds are made up, although broadband users certainly have good reason to be excited about this new Wi-Fi device.
However, a word of warning: it is only good if you are on a good data plan, the Wi-Fi connection is between the devices and the Ultimate, Lewis warns.
