Telstra 5G Home Internet - Unboxing and Initial thoughts

I was finally able to sign up for the Telstra 5G Home Internet service and after a bit of back and forth my modem finally arrived, thought I'd share with OCAU.

Packaging:
Box is pretty basic, I like that, less wastage:



Device:
Modem is pretty basic looking, model indicates it's an Arcadyan AW1000, not heard of that brand before.
It does however have external jacks, I have not tested to see if they are functional yet.


Setup:
Not much to say here, it was quite literally plug and play

Results:
Ran some quick speedtests, this was directly connected to the modem via gigabit ethernet, signal was:
Signal (RSRP/RSRQ/SINR) Good( -96 dBm/ -11 dB/ -15.6 db). I live in the burbs in a pretty quiet area, so YMMV obviously on this.


Of interest though, this is replacing an existing 5g mobile broadband modem (Telstra 5g Wifi Pro), which seemed to speedtest marginally faster (~700 down instead of 600).

Now given variability of expectations from a mobile cell etc. It's probably just testing variation over a shared medium, but interesting nonetheless.

Will update later on with how it goes, hope it works as well as my mobile broadband, have been using that as my primary net connection for my work pc for the last 5 months no issues whilst I kept refreshing the telstra page for the home connection

 

Thanks for sharing. Envious of those upload speeds

Will be interested in how consistent those upload speeds will be

 

Same here!

 

Can we get a speedtest during the middle of the day? I've found my 5G upload falls off a cliff during daylight hours.

Edit: scratch that; 350 down, 93 up at 1:45pm

 

A little OCD on my behalf: lookup where your nearest carrier (in this case Telstra) 5G tower is and place your modem on a windowsill nearest/facing the tower direction for best signal results. Rotating the device seems to make a difference to signal quality as well.

 

Sorry mate been out of action, I'll get this tomorrow for you

 

A quick test (noting I'm wifi speed constrained) had me at 300/97, but down was about my wifi bandwidth max at the time.

My UDM wired directly into it is reporting 600/100

 

Just like the Gen 3 Modem, alas it came with a Magenta colouration with cardboard packaging. Quite nice and professional looking.

Arcadyan 5G, they certainly are expanding everywhere. They're actually quite good quality, considering I love their Arcadyan Gen 2 models way more than the Technicolor ones.

That's the Telstra way here, leaving little effort for the customer to get connected to their network and avoiding any mistakes or errors (that's my theory).

Are one of the few individuals to enjoy such luxury. 5G will never be allowed in our area, simply too expensive and not needed by the majority. In fact, we are still finding it hard to get 3G and 4G services.

Hence, the corroded copper line is our only link to the outside world or Elon Musk's Starlink, for the Rich.

Good to see that, at least in this country somewhere, 5G is being provided for.

 

For those that are interested in this product, you can get 50k Telstra points https://www.telstra.com.au/internet/5g-home-internet

enough to buy 10 iPhone lightning to headphone adapters

 

That's an interesting choice of items... are they the only thing not affected by silicon shortages?

 

Mine still isn't even showing up on my account lol

 

were you meant to get the points? It was only announced a couple of weeks ago but pm me your 2000 account number, and I’ll follow it up

 

Oh I meant the whole service, I'm watching with interest to see what happens when the bill comes due

 

Oh.. interesting. If you want me to follow up, pm me the 2000 number

 

One question on the connection - do you get a public routable IP address? or is this hidden behind Telstra's NAT.

 

All residential mobile broadband plans are behind Telstra's NAT. I have a Telstra MB plan and to get a public address you need to use VPN with a private address. VOIP works fine for me, and any managed security camera systems that doesn't require port forwarding like Reolink.

https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/publicip

Not sure how up to date that is.

 

I ordered this because of the first month free and 50k bonus points.
Modem arrived and was able to set it up without issue.
Decent speeds but on the lower end of 5G capable speeds.

Funnily enough, my order is still 'in progress' so it looks like I have free 5G internet until they update my order status lol

Check your order status. Mine is still stuck in 'Hardware delivery' even though it's been marked as delivered.