Opinion: Oink flap

However, there’s a Telstra/NetComm Wireless Gateway on the desk at the moment for a review I’m writing. This toy arrived last week, and all it needs is electricity.

It gets its broadband via Next G after you plug a SIM card into a slot on the back. It then sends out broadband via its four Ethernet ports and/or its built-in WiFi.

My initial testing found this box maxed out at 650Kbps. Okay, so it’s better than dial-up. At least ten times better than dial-up in fact. And twice as good as what was first on offer via ADSL.

But times have changed and there aren’t too many punters who’d be happy calling 650Kbps “broadband speed” these days. But, if you can’t get ADSL and you don’t live in a zone covered by cable or some other wireless offering, this thing is Next G so it will work almost anywhere. (Feel free to stake your claim as the only person on the mainland who can’t get a Next G signal in the comments box below.)

Getting back to the flying pigs sightings, we ran the speed tests again this morning and…Telstra was telling the truth. Who knew? Who even suspected? Today, the same setup records consistent speeds of 1600Kbps and occasionally hits 2Mbps.

And that’s broadband by anybody’s reckoning. And the download limit – before the $2000 per nanobit excess rates kick in – has jumped from 80Mb to 300MB on the $29 monthly plan.

Not exactly enough to download the entire Internet, but at least you can read emails without getting a shock horror excess use bill at the end of the month.

And if you download from Telstra’s own BigPond sites that stuff doesn’t count towards your limit.

Amazing. I’m off to attach guy ropes to my pigs before they all fly away.