Dude I have seen you post this on several articles. Why bother making such a useless post instead of actually trying to have some sort of meaningful discussion?
Because he can and Anadtech's comment system was implemented using technology from the early 1800s. This means there's no option to report such comment and banning is unheard of around here.
Back on the story, at 1Gbps that will drain even the best mobile plan in a matter of seconds. So this kind of speed doesn't even have theoretical usability.
Only if the mobile plan has limited data. Which I would consider a criteria for being "the best mobile plan". So no, it won't drain it, and it has real practical usability.
So far I haven't heard of any unlimited data plans that have no "fair usage policy". All of them get throttled if you (ab)use them. Either someone offers such a plan without any fineprint which I seriously doubt, or we have different definitions of practical usability.
Just to be clear, Telstra's current mobile data offering gives you 5GB (as in the article picture) + 2GB bonus for only $50. You can also get 10+2GB for $70. You can also get some voice plans with 30GB at ~$200.
So no, no usability. Not only do networks NOT have the capacity to deliver unlimited data, they also can't do it at these speeds. And I doubt the speed is actually achievable in any real life scenario. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't think it will be anytime soon.
When I moved and was without wired internet for a while, all of my 300-800 GB of monthly traffic went through mobile. Nobody questioned it. They even advertize mobile internet to be used as your main internet at home.
Later I was about to move to another operator (because of some other issues) and they desperately wanted me to stay. They lowered my bill and said on the phone "You use hundreds of gigs of data. You know we have the fastest mobile network, right?". Not that there's any real difference in their networks, but they obviously don't care about the amount of data I use.
If you don't mind me asking, where do you live and what mobile provider do you use that's willing to lower the bill just so you can continue using up to almost 1TB (!) of mobile data monthly? I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I'm pretty sure 99.9999% of the world can't take advantage of this.
In the capital of Finland. Not a very big place, half a M people, but 4G works at advertised speeds (mine is capped at 50/30 Mbit/s) everywhere in the city. In fact in pretty much every city and along highways. Doesn't really matter what operator, all the big ones are the same.
Well then, when Finland's "unlimited data" ends up in the rest of Europe we may have another discussion :). Unfortunately even that won't help countries with a large population. It's one thing to give unlimited high speed data to 5 million people, quite another to do it for a country of 50, 80, or 300 million. The "unlimited data" part is not really the problem, rather the speed that you can offer to people after all of them decide to jump on the bandwagon.
Also I assume you don't have anywhere near 1Gbps, right?
P.S. I see this is becoming popular in many countries that developed their infrastructure relatively recently. This probably allows countries like Lithuania, Latvia, or Romania to have unlimited internet and dizzying internet speeds (either fixed or mobile) for prices in the 10-30E range while "developed countries" like US, Germany and others are stuck on plans with a handful of GBs for double the price.
A big city of 5M should be easier to give mobile internet to than 5M people spread out over a large area. Also, I don't really see why a country of 50M people couldn't work like 10 smaller 5M-people countries. It might be more difficult to coordinate everything for 50M people at the same time, but on the other hand there's a lot more resources to do so, and a lot more customers. And you could do it in smaller "5M people steps".
Finland has been on the "cutting edge" of mobile internet since pretty much the beginning, and has constantly replaced the old with the newest.
No, I don't have 1Gbit/s. Personally I only want to pay 10€ for 50Mbit/s, but you can get 300Mbit/s for a lot more money.
Well the math for this doesn't really scale like that. For one, Finland's total mobile traffic for 2015 was ~650000TB and we can assume it increased in 2016. 10 times the population would imply 650PB of mobile traffic. For the US (60+ times larger) it might mean 40 million TB or mobile traffic.
All great until you realize costs don't scale linearly. Also some countries for example don't allow installing additional mobile towers in cities so the only way to increase capacity is to always use the cutting edge (and very expensive) technology for infrastructure.
I have unlimited LTE bandwidth with my current operator, but you're right, it gets throttled to 50 Mbps after first 100GB downloaded. I pay 7€/mo and I can lift the throttle limit to 500GB with 4.5€.
Vatharian, just western Europe apparently. Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe look like they have plenty of "unlimited data" plans for reasonable prices but as far as I can tell all of them have throttling after a limit.
Complaining about that is missing the point. Are you suggesting people should only have connection speeds that match their monthly data cap? If you're going to download half of your monthly allotted data per month, why shouldn't you be able to do that as quickly as possible? I've never hit my data cap, but it's crazy that I would want to wait any longer than necessary for things to download.
There must be some sort of correlation in situations where you have a limited data. Think of the correlation between engine and fuel tank in cars. A Ferrari will have an 80-100l tank, while a Fiesta does away with 40l. It's one thing to gave 1Gbps over unlimited fiber connections, quite another to have it over a metered one that gets exhausted in seconds. Assuming you even reach those speeds which I doubt.
Over a limited connection increasing speed brings severely diminished returns. So on a 30GB plan (Telstra's highest on their website) the difference between 100Mbps and 1000Mbps is... 36 minutes over the course of a month.
So until you have reasonable data plans in the hundreds of GBs at a reasonable price, and the network can actually deliver it not just on paper I stand by my "usability" statement.
The thing with Australian Mobile internet is that... We don't have many cell towers packed closely together, so there are more users per-tower overall. It also allows a company like Telstra to have one of the largest LTE networks in the world in regards to sheer amount of land coverage as they can space the towers out.
But to counter the higher user ratios, they need higher LTE speeds to compensate, which is why Telstra has led the world since 3G in adopting the fastest mobile technologies.
It's much cheaper for Telstra to upgrade the towers and advertise their new shiny speed than it is to build more towers and more backhaul links... And then they can sell you "Data Packs" to top up your data when you run out. Win win.
****
With that said, this Anandtech is also incorrect. Australia has almost complete Broadband coverage thanks to wide-beam satellite.
Up to 1Gbit/s download speed, but only 5GB on the plan (2.85/5GB used in the image). Seems like they should be focusing on more network capacity before they worry about faster download speeds, no?
I can get 200 GB of data for $40. So it's pretty much just the North American market that's messed up. Granted, it's not exactly 1 Gbit/s speeds - not even close.
I'd be fine with even just 20. That's enough to stream 1080p60. I dont NEED gigabit, per se.
I'd love more data, and to be able to cut my cable provider. If somebody offered 200GB, i'd drop cable in a second. I only used 50GB last month.....
but the most you can get here is t mobile's unlimited data, which comes with pages of fine print, and gets throttled after 28GB (and if you use more data through your hotspot then the device itself, they have the right to terminate your plan, which is BS).
Or verizon, but 200GB through them would cost a LOT. 100GB is $450 a month through them....
That's on Telestra, not Netgear. Based on rants from an acquaintance who used their network for his home internet, it's possible that's a 15 year old plan cap but since Netgear never called and asked to be put on the current cap they never were.
Cricket can't run at these speeds, T-Mo is the only US carrier that even has the capability. In time they all will but certainly not today. T-Mo ran a 1 gig test somewhere in the SW, New Mexico maybe? It needed 4x4 mimo to do it but they were right at the 1 gig mark.
I dont care about getting 1 gigabit, i care about how much data I can get per month. Having a gigabit with a 5GB cap is like having a ferrari with a 1 quart fuel tank.
That being said, if tmo allowed this to use their unlimited plan (which I doubt) that would be awesome. Still more expensive then gettings phones through metro PCS and a separate cable internet bill though.
I suspect that this Nighthawk modem will do better than the phones because it is less power and space constrained.
Telstra is expensive for data though AU$55 for 15 GB/month - ouch!.
Other carriers are much cheaper, but don't have a very extensive 4GX network at the moment and currently don't have the Nighthawk anyway, e.g. Optus AU$80 for 200 GB/month including a non-X 4G modem (http://eftm.com.au/2016/12/optus-home-wireless-bro...
That Optus 200GB package is limited to 21 or 5 Mbit/s speeds.
Telstra's network is technically good (apart from the outages and other issues the company has, just like the fire couple of days ago that crippled network across the country and resulted SMS's being delivered to wrong numbers) but their service offerings are from last decade.
While you can get decent Telstra 4GX with 20GB/month and if you're lucky, a 100 Mbit/s VDSL in Australia -- it's still pretty far away from so many countries with uncapped mobile data and gigabit home Internet being widely available. And I'm not even talking about Asia here.. (Luckily Australia has been getting better the last few years as well)
It makes perfect sense for me. In my forest house I only have the option of mobile broadband, and I can buy unlimited 4G broadband for 39€/mo. This product is pretty much exactly what I would need to work from there. The battery is a nice bonus for the times when a falling tree has severed power lines again. And I could easily grab it with me for road trips and what not.
What is Cat 16? You guys are burying the lead here. There has been some kind of insane wired speed breakthrough that doesn't cost as much as a small country.
Already using the Netgear Netgear M1, it can only reach 600mbps, not really 1Gbit/s for wireless. The latest Huawei E5788 would be the right one for 1Gbps data transmission: https://www.4gltemall.com/huawei-e5788-gigabit-lte...
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
50 Comments
Back to Article
SaolDan - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Neat!!!extide - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Dude I have seen you post this on several articles. Why bother making such a useless post instead of actually trying to have some sort of meaningful discussion?close - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Because he can and Anadtech's comment system was implemented using technology from the early 1800s. This means there's no option to report such comment and banning is unheard of around here.Back on the story, at 1Gbps that will drain even the best mobile plan in a matter of seconds. So this kind of speed doesn't even have theoretical usability.
ajp_anton - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Only if the mobile plan has limited data. Which I would consider a criteria for being "the best mobile plan". So no, it won't drain it, and it has real practical usability.close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
So far I haven't heard of any unlimited data plans that have no "fair usage policy". All of them get throttled if you (ab)use them. Either someone offers such a plan without any fineprint which I seriously doubt, or we have different definitions of practical usability.Just to be clear, Telstra's current mobile data offering gives you 5GB (as in the article picture) + 2GB bonus for only $50. You can also get 10+2GB for $70. You can also get some voice plans with 30GB at ~$200.
So no, no usability. Not only do networks NOT have the capacity to deliver unlimited data, they also can't do it at these speeds. And I doubt the speed is actually achievable in any real life scenario. I'd love to be proven wrong but I don't think it will be anytime soon.
ajp_anton - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
When I moved and was without wired internet for a while, all of my 300-800 GB of monthly traffic went through mobile. Nobody questioned it. They even advertize mobile internet to be used as your main internet at home.Later I was about to move to another operator (because of some other issues) and they desperately wanted me to stay. They lowered my bill and said on the phone "You use hundreds of gigs of data. You know we have the fastest mobile network, right?". Not that there's any real difference in their networks, but they obviously don't care about the amount of data I use.
close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
If you don't mind me asking, where do you live and what mobile provider do you use that's willing to lower the bill just so you can continue using up to almost 1TB (!) of mobile data monthly? I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I'm pretty sure 99.9999% of the world can't take advantage of this.ajp_anton - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
In the capital of Finland. Not a very big place, half a M people, but 4G works at advertised speeds (mine is capped at 50/30 Mbit/s) everywhere in the city. In fact in pretty much every city and along highways. Doesn't really matter what operator, all the big ones are the same.close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Well then, when Finland's "unlimited data" ends up in the rest of Europe we may have another discussion :). Unfortunately even that won't help countries with a large population. It's one thing to give unlimited high speed data to 5 million people, quite another to do it for a country of 50, 80, or 300 million.The "unlimited data" part is not really the problem, rather the speed that you can offer to people after all of them decide to jump on the bandwagon.
Also I assume you don't have anywhere near 1Gbps, right?
close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
P.S. I see this is becoming popular in many countries that developed their infrastructure relatively recently. This probably allows countries like Lithuania, Latvia, or Romania to have unlimited internet and dizzying internet speeds (either fixed or mobile) for prices in the 10-30E range while "developed countries" like US, Germany and others are stuck on plans with a handful of GBs for double the price.ajp_anton - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
A big city of 5M should be easier to give mobile internet to than 5M people spread out over a large area.Also, I don't really see why a country of 50M people couldn't work like 10 smaller 5M-people countries. It might be more difficult to coordinate everything for 50M people at the same time, but on the other hand there's a lot more resources to do so, and a lot more customers. And you could do it in smaller "5M people steps".
Finland has been on the "cutting edge" of mobile internet since pretty much the beginning, and has constantly replaced the old with the newest.
No, I don't have 1Gbit/s. Personally I only want to pay 10€ for 50Mbit/s, but you can get 300Mbit/s for a lot more money.
close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Well the math for this doesn't really scale like that. For one, Finland's total mobile traffic for 2015 was ~650000TB and we can assume it increased in 2016. 10 times the population would imply 650PB of mobile traffic. For the US (60+ times larger) it might mean 40 million TB or mobile traffic.All great until you realize costs don't scale linearly. Also some countries for example don't allow installing additional mobile towers in cities so the only way to increase capacity is to always use the cutting edge (and very expensive) technology for infrastructure.
fanofanand - Thursday, February 9, 2017 - link
He answered your question already "(mine is capped at 50/30 Mbit/s)"Vatharian - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I have unlimited LTE bandwidth with my current operator, but you're right, it gets throttled to 50 Mbps after first 100GB downloaded. I pay 7€/mo and I can lift the throttle limit to 500GB with 4.5€.Oh, Europe.
close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Vatharian, just western Europe apparently. Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe look like they have plenty of "unlimited data" plans for reasonable prices but as far as I can tell all of them have throttling after a limit.tyger11 - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Complaining about that is missing the point. Are you suggesting people should only have connection speeds that match their monthly data cap? If you're going to download half of your monthly allotted data per month, why shouldn't you be able to do that as quickly as possible? I've never hit my data cap, but it's crazy that I would want to wait any longer than necessary for things to download.close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
There must be some sort of correlation in situations where you have a limited data. Think of the correlation between engine and fuel tank in cars. A Ferrari will have an 80-100l tank, while a Fiesta does away with 40l.It's one thing to gave 1Gbps over unlimited fiber connections, quite another to have it over a metered one that gets exhausted in seconds. Assuming you even reach those speeds which I doubt.
Over a limited connection increasing speed brings severely diminished returns. So on a 30GB plan (Telstra's highest on their website) the difference between 100Mbps and 1000Mbps is... 36 minutes over the course of a month.
So until you have reasonable data plans in the hundreds of GBs at a reasonable price, and the network can actually deliver it not just on paper I stand by my "usability" statement.
Meteor2 - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
It seems utterly bizarre to launch such a device. Your fuel tank analogy is very good.Maybe Telstra are going to roll out some new plans which, well, make sense?
ZeDestructor - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Knowing Tesltra, highly unlikely.StevoLincolnite - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
The thing with Australian Mobile internet is that... We don't have many cell towers packed closely together, so there are more users per-tower overall.It also allows a company like Telstra to have one of the largest LTE networks in the world in regards to sheer amount of land coverage as they can space the towers out.
But to counter the higher user ratios, they need higher LTE speeds to compensate, which is why Telstra has led the world since 3G in adopting the fastest mobile technologies.
It's much cheaper for Telstra to upgrade the towers and advertise their new shiny speed than it is to build more towers and more backhaul links... And then they can sell you "Data Packs" to top up your data when you run out. Win win.
****
With that said, this Anandtech is also incorrect.
Australia has almost complete Broadband coverage thanks to wide-beam satellite.
SaolDan - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
ok fine. should i say something like "ohhh i love this modem". neat pretty much sums up what i feel like saying.HomeworldFound - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Amazing!!!SaolDan - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Homeworldfound understandsDesidero - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Up to 1Gbit/s download speed, but only 5GB on the plan (2.85/5GB used in the image). Seems like they should be focusing on more network capacity before they worry about faster download speeds, no?TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Agreed. We should be at 50GB for $40-50 a month by this point. Mobile data prices are outrageous.Trixanity - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
I can get 200 GB of data for $40. So it's pretty much just the North American market that's messed up. Granted, it's not exactly 1 Gbit/s speeds - not even close.ajp_anton - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
The most expensive "unlimited everything" plan I can get is 50€. Still not Gbit/s speeds, but 300Mbit/s. 100Mbit/s is half that price.close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
You guys really should share the name of the provider. If I'm lucky I live nearby.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I'd be fine with even just 20. That's enough to stream 1080p60. I dont NEED gigabit, per se.I'd love more data, and to be able to cut my cable provider. If somebody offered 200GB, i'd drop cable in a second. I only used 50GB last month.....
but the most you can get here is t mobile's unlimited data, which comes with pages of fine print, and gets throttled after 28GB (and if you use more data through your hotspot then the device itself, they have the right to terminate your plan, which is BS).
Or verizon, but 200GB through them would cost a LOT. 100GB is $450 a month through them....
peteroj - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I guess you haven't been to Australia where this device was launched.In 2017 mobile data should be uncapped and only covered by T&C's to protect from ridiculous use.
DanNeely - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
That's on Telestra, not Netgear. Based on rants from an acquaintance who used their network for his home internet, it's possible that's a 15 year old plan cap but since Netgear never called and asked to be put on the current cap they never were.HomeworldFound - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
It's Telstra nub.dancer89 - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
10Gb / month for $55 aud here in oz on Telstra.The 5Gb plan would be $35
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
So, I'm slightly confused. Could you buy this and put any 4G SIM from your carrier of choice for home internet?I wonder if it would work with cricket.....
lopri - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
It should work in theory and it does work in practice, but there is no guarantee.fanofanand - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Cricket can't run at these speeds, T-Mo is the only US carrier that even has the capability. In time they all will but certainly not today. T-Mo ran a 1 gig test somewhere in the SW, New Mexico maybe? It needed 4x4 mimo to do it but they were right at the 1 gig mark.reuthermonkey1 - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
yep this. TMO is already rolling out 3x3 MIMO in a number of markets.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I dont care about getting 1 gigabit, i care about how much data I can get per month. Having a gigabit with a 5GB cap is like having a ferrari with a 1 quart fuel tank.That being said, if tmo allowed this to use their unlimited plan (which I doubt) that would be awesome. Still more expensive then gettings phones through metro PCS and a separate cable internet bill though.
fanofanand - Thursday, February 9, 2017 - link
T-Mo throttles after 28 GB so it would be quite useless if your consumption dramatically exceeds that.StrangerGuy - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
~$300 for glorified tethering in a real world with stingy data caps and throughput far from test lab speeds? I can't stop laughing at this.hlovatt - Thursday, February 2, 2017 - link
Throughput in Australia on Telstra is quite good, about 300 Mb/s on a modern phone in an area that has 4GX LTE (as Telstra call it). http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/1825007645I suspect that this Nighthawk modem will do better than the phones because it is less power and space constrained.
Telstra is expensive for data though AU$55 for 15 GB/month - ouch!.
Other carriers are much cheaper, but don't have a very extensive 4GX network at the moment and currently don't have the Nighthawk anyway, e.g. Optus AU$80 for 200 GB/month including a non-X 4G modem (http://eftm.com.au/2016/12/optus-home-wireless-bro...
peteroj - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
That Optus 200GB package is limited to 21 or 5 Mbit/s speeds.Telstra's network is technically good (apart from the outages and other issues the company has, just like the fire couple of days ago that crippled network across the country and resulted SMS's being delivered to wrong numbers) but their service offerings are from last decade.
While you can get decent Telstra 4GX with 20GB/month and if you're lucky, a 100 Mbit/s VDSL in Australia -- it's still pretty far away from so many countries with uncapped mobile data and gigabit home Internet being widely available. And I'm not even talking about Asia here..
(Luckily Australia has been getting better the last few years as well)
Tylanner - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Mobile tethering lives almost exclusively in the realm of large business expenses.You are right it is expensive, but to dismiss it as unnecessary may be a bit closed minded.
stepz - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
It makes perfect sense for me. In my forest house I only have the option of mobile broadband, and I can buy unlimited 4G broadband for 39€/mo. This product is pretty much exactly what I would need to work from there. The battery is a nice bonus for the times when a falling tree has severed power lines again. And I could easily grab it with me for road trips and what not.Azethoth - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
What is Cat 16? You guys are burying the lead here. There has been some kind of insane wired speed breakthrough that doesn't cost as much as a small country.close - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
You don't really make sense but... LTE user equipment category - LTE Category 16 (only for downlink). http://niviuk.free.fr/ue_category.phpfanofanand - Thursday, February 9, 2017 - link
I think he was confusing cat as used in ethernet cabling and cat as in mobile lte spectrum bands.Estyle - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Already using the Netgear Netgear M1, it can only reach 600mbps, not really 1Gbit/s for wireless. The latest Huawei E5788 would be the right one for 1Gbps data transmission: https://www.4gltemall.com/huawei-e5788-gigabit-lte...Estyle - Saturday, April 14, 2018 - link
I already bought unlocked Nighthawk M1 from https://www.4gltemall.com/netgear-nighthawk-m1-mr1... It's really great mobile hotspot for LTE advanced Pro networks.Estyle - Wednesday, May 16, 2018 - link
How to update the firmware of Nighthawk M1(https://www.4gltemall.com/netgear-nighthawk-m1-mr1...