My 4G hands-on experience
Filed under: 4G, LTE, smart phone, technology, Telstra CEO
The arrival of Telstra’s 4G network coincided with almost one million new mobile customers coming to Telstra in the second half of last year.
It highlights how more people are seeing a positive change in our focus on you as the customer, offering better value plans and fantastic handsets backed by Australia’s most reliable mobile network.
It’s fair to say that Australians have well and truly embraced mobile technology, particularly the new generation of smartphones. In fact, smartphones now account for more than half of Telstra’s consumer post-paid mobile base.
Given the growing popularity of smartphones, last year we invested in Australia’s first 4G LTE network. Since then we’ve grown our 4G coverage footprint to 80 regional and metropolitan locations, with further sites going on line in coming weeks and months.
I enjoy testing all our new offerings, so I’ve been trialling the new HTC Velocity on our 4G LTE network since the handset’s launch in January. Aside from the terrific handset design and functionality (especially the 4.5” high resolution display), what really excites me is the HTC Velocity’s data performance.
On the 4G LTE network it can deliver typical download speeds ranging from 2Mbps to 40Mbps and typical upload speeds of 1Mbps to 10Mbps. To put this in context, the download speeds are up to five times faster than today’s fastest 3G smartphones. My actual experience has been usually around 25 – 30Mbps down and 15 – 18 Mbps up – which is pretty good!
From a personal perspective I like to keep track of the network’s performance – and I have to admit that the speed test app is one of the most used on my phone! The app is a great way to demonstrate the speed of our 4G LTE network and I’m always pleased to let people test the speeds on my handset for themselves.
We know that our customers want high-speed 4G products. 100,000 mobile broadband customers are already using our 4G network following its launch in late September, and the HTC Velocity has been our third highest selling consumer post-paid handset in recent weeks.
Over the next six months we will continue to add to our 4G device range with up to four additional 4G smartphones and at least one 4G tablet. So there will be even more reasons to use Australia’s fastest mobile network – our network!
As you will know, we are committed to investing in customer service to meet this increased demand and we still have a lot more to do to improve the service we offer our customers.
I always enjoy hearing your views, so if you have been using our 4G network or the HTC Velocity, please let me know. I look forward to reading your comments.
I tested your 4G mobile broadband recently and also saw an improvement. It was actually for a demo to a customer of a data file being uploaded online. Had tried it using 3G earlier and then with 4G it really made a difference.
I have moved my mobile broadband to the 4G service particularly when presenting internet applications to customers. The faster the better. Slow moments can cause additional stress not required. Was really glad when 4G was made available.
Great to have the coverage, but only the one LTE mobile phone is a little disappointing. You need to bring in more such as the Nokia Lumia 900 or the Lumia 800 with LTE.
Hopefully this will be announced soon.
Hi David,
please find following a post I am putting everywhere I can find on the Telstra site. I have tried your complaints team (you know the CEO complaints team and found them to be completely unsatisfactory in my opinion.
I have tried to get Peter to call me so if you want to call all the better, alternately please get Peter to give me a call.
To Peter Jamieson
Dear Peter,
I have a complaint with Telstra.
In my opinion I have been ignored, lied to, deceived, ripped off, and shown a level of customer service that verges on the absurd (sorry now I think about it I cannot say any of the recent transactions that I have had with your organisation could be called service at all).
You have sent me signed (albeit pro forma) emails so please step up to the plate and give me a call.
So please get in contact ASAP as I am SICK and TIRED of your organisations incompetence….
Fix it-call me.
Ref 120424-013148
Greg.
Hi Greg, I’ve asked a local team to call you. Brendan
Hi David,
I’ve been trialling this phone for 4 weeks, and confirm it’s the best Android out at this moment. I upgraded it to Ice Cream Sandwich the minute it got released o/s…functionality brilliant here in Oz on 4G. Interactive widgets fab, responding to calls w/txt using a only 2 keystrokes fab, voice input amazing, and enhanced camera features very handy. It also syncs to Outlook with no problem (Samsung still as issues with Outlook 2010). Downside is the Android Bugbear: it still suffers the Android problem of not correctly syncing Bluetooth phonebooks to car phones (mobile phone numbers aren’t included or correctly displayed). Reckon I can fix that problem if I “jailbreak” the phone…and there are many people that will, David, if it doesn’t get fixed! A great little YouTube explains all. But I won’t do that to you yet..let me know if any gurus have resolved..regards, Tricia
I know you’re a busy executive David but I would urge you to read the posts on my Facebook wall and I would love it if you could spare me the time for a response.
Ref my previous comment.
Not too many Facebook profiles with the same name. I’m the one with location being Atherton
Malcolm. May I suggest you use this form to send your feedback and I will personally pass it on to the CEO team.
I believe our account is a Business acccount based on my wife’s mobile phone plan although the bill comes to me.
On 20th March I rang tech services to report malfunctioning Home wireless gateway modem. After testing I was told I would need a replacement which would arrive within 3-5 business days.
On 31 March when no modem had been received rang again and found nothing had been done and noone appeared to have any knowledge of it. I was promised a new wireless wifi modem would be sent out to arrive within 3-5 business days.
Rang again on 5th April to check on order and was told a modem should be arriving within 3-5 business days.
12th April. Finally picked up a parcel from the Post Office but when I got it home it wouldnt work. Rang Tech support who asked me for the IMEI number and told me that modem had been assigned to another account holder and it would need to be exchanged with as new modem which would arrive within 3-5 business days.
23rd April -still no modem and no internet. On the phone for another long period during my income producing time while “support” staff “checked the status of my order. Finally advised that a modem would be arriving within 3-5 business days.
26 April. Received a call from lovely filipino lady saying she had just received an orderand was processing it so she could have a modem sent out. So much for the last “3-5 business days”!
4 may. Received a package addressed to someone I had never heard of at my Post Office Box. It turned out to contain a USB “dongle” type modem which is not a wifi gateway and has no way of connecting a patch lead to an external aerial, So it is totally useless at my place – no signal. Tracked down the person it was addressed to via Facebook and Linked In (400 miles away). Gave them a ring. His partner told me they already had their modem – in fact they had two because the first one was the wrong kind. Sounded surprisingly familiar!
5th May. Rang complaints and was asked again for the IMEI number of the original WiFi modem delivered on 12th April. After half an hour they transferred me to tech services. They informed me what I already knew, that the unit had been registered to someone elses account, and promised to call back within half an hour. After three hours there was no return call so I rang again and after another half hour I was again promised that I would be called back within half an hour. This guy did call back after an hour and told me that he would arrange for a unit to be sent out express within two business days.
12th May. No modem. Rang complaints again. After waiting a prodigious amount of time I was finally informed that a unit for me had been delivered to Yulara Post Office the previous day and was ready to be picked up. Needless to say I was nearly apoplectic to hear this after seven weeks of battling. Yulara is probably the closest Post Office to the centre of Australia and approximately 1700km away from the Post Office Box at Tolga where my Telstra account has been located for more than twenty years (since the good old days when I had a telecommunications service which was the equivalent of that enjoyed by most Australians). The “support” person asked “you are not familiar with that Post Office?” and put me back on hold to deal with my grinding teeth and hair shredding.
After a time he came back on to tell me a modem had been sent out to me in mid -April so I went back over the whole story for him yet again. Finally he came back on and gave me a number for the Townsville technical support team anmd concluded the call after one and three quarter hours of my work day. Not a bad duration even for Telstra! I decided to take the rest of the day of and go home to where the modem was and to try and sort this out one final time.
Rang Townsville tech support where, after two hours of back and forth phone calls, david and the NQ guys were able to reconfigure both the modem I had and the one I was supposed to have received which was in the possession of another similarly pissed off customer who was threatening to go to the TIO. I was also thinking of doing that but I had already been to them about breaches of service commitments on my landline and at the time it didn’t achieve much.
At the end of Davids action I had internet again for the first time in nearly seven weeks. You have at least one effective employee!
I must have talked to twenty other employees over this issue who either botched things up or failed to do what they promised.
I estimate that I spent a day and a half of my working life on this matter and i think even the most complacent bureaucrat would have to recognise that it caused me a great deal of angst.
I would appreciate a reponse to my experiences from someone at a senior level in Telstra together with a reasonable offer of compensation. ( Another hour spent putting this summary together. See more details on my Facebook page)
If you’ve got this far thankyou for your attention.
Hello Malcolm. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. I can see it was not pleasant for you and I have passsed this on and asked the CEO team to get in touch.
David, you said: “we still have a lot more to do to improve the service we offer our customers”. Here’s one suggestion – demonstrate some empathy.
24hrs ago, i set a 20Mb podcast to download through itunes on my iphone. I received a text from Telstra saying i was at 85% of data usage at 4pm yesterday – but when i tried to login to view my data usage – i got a red text error message saying service not available. So i assumed the text had been sent by a network error since i had hardly used any data services. At 1am I got a Telstra SMS alert to say i was over my download limit. I can now view my data usage, and it went over my cap at 5pm, not 1am.
It appears as though the podcast RSS feed must have been corrupted, or an itunes bug caused the file to get stuck in a continuous download loop. So my 1.5Gb data cap got more than sucked dry, and now i’m looking at an extra $131 on my bill and no data usage for over 2 weeks until my new bill cycle begins.
Any company with empathy or interest in building customer relationships would recognise that software glitch (probably after doing some investigation of their own to validate my claim) and waive the extra data charge.
But Telstra staff just told me it was unfortunate, but that i would be billed in full for the excess data. You wont even let me by a data pack to cover the extra usage. Oh no, you want to ‘punish me’ to the full extent that your terms and conditions allow.
What kind of relationship do you think we are going to have now? Please show some clemency and suggest a solution that doesn’t penalise me so harshly.
Hi Clarke. Send me your account and contact details and I will ask for a local response team member to call you. You can use this form. Brendan.