Australia’s Telstra surpasses the competition in 5G speed

Wireless connectivity and enhanced Internet speeds enable greater, more efficient levels of online activity. This concept refers to the speed with which data travels from the World Wide Web to any device people use when connected to the internet.

Megabits per second (Mbps) is the measurement unit of the speed of data, as in 1.0 Mbps is more than 1,000 times faster than 1.0 kilobits per second (Kbps).

Australia, has seen the emergence of one of its telecom operators, Telstra, leading the way in 5G download rates, according to a report by Opensignal.

The Australian mobile market is dominated by the three major mobile network operators Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone (VHA).

Opensignal, an independent mobile analytics company, report notes, “The carrier recorded an average download speed of 231.8 Mbps, beating rival carrier Optus by 61.9 Mbps (36.4%).”

“The two Australian operators are statistically tied on 5G availability, the percentage of time that our 5G users spent connected to 5G services. Both obtained percentage scores that are below 9% – not surprising given that the first 5G commercial launch in the country was in May 2019 and rolling out a new generation of mobile network technology across a country as vast as Australia is the work of years, not months,” Opensignal said.

As long as telco rollouts of the network is in progress, 5G availability rises, however it is also expected to rise once the impact of the Coronavirus diminishes.

Telstra got first place for overall speed, with a score of 52.5 Mbps, which has beaten Optus’ score of 46.7 Mbps by 5.8 Mbps (12.3%), and the high 4G speed users have experienced while using the network is the main reason for Telstra’s lead for this measure of the mobile network experience.

These results came through by recording 578.1 million measurements of 119,040 5G devices from May 1 to July 29 across indoor and outdoor locations.

In addition, Australian carrier Telstra expects its 5G network to cover 75% of the country’s population by June 2021, the company’s CEO Andrew Penn said. “Our companies 5G network already covers around one-third of the population.”

Fifty-three cities and regional towns in the country are already covered by commercial 5G services offered by the telco.