Telstra is ready to flick the switch on Melbourne’s upgraded 100Mbps cable broadband network, but users wait to learn the price for having Australia’s fastest home Internet...
One million Melbourne homes will soon be able to download the latest episode of
Entourage in the time it takes to order a pizza to eat while you watch the show.
December 1st is the day when Telstra flicks the switch on its upgraded cable network, which it promises will deliver speeds of up to 100Mbps to ‘selected areas’ of the city.
Not all homes currently connected to the BigPond Extreme cable network, which peaks at 17-30Mbps, will be within reach of the turbo-charged connection – and Telstra has yet to detail how much users will pay for such bone-rattling speeds.
Accompanying the high-speed pipeline is the new BigPond Velocity Home Network Gateway, which splits the 100Mbps cable through four Gigabit Ethernet ports plus 802.11n wireless.
Melbourne’s BigPond Cable customers will also be able to trial Telstra’s new T-Box set-top TV unit.
Part TiVo and part something-else-again, the T-Box contains two digital TV tuners and a 200GB hard drive which can record free-to-air TV channels as well as access Telstra’s seven BigPond IPTV channels and the BigPond Movies download rental service. The T-Box service will also include an EPG for the free-to-air TV channels.
Telstra said the T-Box trials will be expanded to other cities and users on the ADSL2+ network at a later date.