74 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
# Telstra customer chews through 425GB of mobile data during free data Sunday
|
||
|
||
- **期号**: SRE Weekly Issue #11（2016-02-21）
|
||
- **作者**: —
|
||
- **链接**: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/telstra-customer-chews-through-425gb-of-mobile-data-during-free-data-sunday-20160215-gmuz72.html
|
||
|
||
## 简介
|
||
|
||
When I saw Telstra offer a day of free data to its customers to make up for last week’s outage, I cringed. I’m impressed that they survived last Sunday as Australia used 1.8 petabtytes of data.
|
||
|
||
## 正文
|
||
|
||
This was published 10 years ago
|
||
|
||
# Telstra customer chews through 425GB of mobile data during free data Sunday
|
||
|
||
Updated ,first published
|
||
|
||
A Telstra customer ripped through a mammoth 425GB of mobile data during the telco's free data offering on Sunday.
|
||
|
||
Telstra made the offer to its mobile customers as an apology for the ["embarrassing human error"](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/telstra-outage-manager-connected-customers-to-faulty-node-in-embarrassing-error-20160209-gmpn7f.html) which caused [widespread network outage](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/major-telstra-mobile-outage-hits-nationwide-with-calls-and-data-affected-20160209-gmpagu.html) last Tuesday.
|
||
|
||
425GB of data is more than enough to download all five seasons of *Game of Thrones* in high definition – four times over.
|
||
|
||
The data-hungry customer, John, from Rhodes in Sydney, said he downloaded all 25 seasons of the Discovery Channel's *How It's Made*; a "few other random TV show seasons"; and synced his entire Steam computer game library – 172 games in total – to a portable hard drive.
|
||
|
||
The lucky customer said he was using an LG G4 smartphone and was connected to Telstra's 4GX network, which is multiple times faster than regular 4G.
|
||
|
||
A screenshot of speed tests throughout the day showed he enjoyed download speeds of 104Mbps to 168Mbps, and upload speeds of between 31Mbps and 42Mbps.
|
||
|
||
"The best I get on my normal wonder-copper at home is 1.5Mbps ADSL1 due to location [distance from exchange]," John said, clearly happy to be lapping up super-fast mobile broadband free of charge.
|
||
|
||
John told Fairfax he had tethered his own laptop as well as his girlfriend's to the mobile phone using a Wi-Fi hotspot.
|
||
|
||
He said he was "very" happy with unlimited data on the 4GX connection.
|
||
|
||
"Because my home internet is slow, I would not be able to do this normally," he said.
|
||
|
||
"So the moment I heard about the free data offer, I spent the week getting downloads ready in preparation for Sunday.
|
||
|
||
"I'm now caught up on about 3 months worth of downloads."
|
||
|
||
By midnight, when the free data was due to switch off, he said he "ran out of things to download".
|
||
|
||
John said Australia had some of the most expensive data in the world and it was nice to not be restricted for once.
|
||
|
||
Other customers bragged they had downloaded even more than 400GB, but did not provide any screenshots of their usage.
|
||
|
||
"Plenty of users including myself did more than 400GB (and I would have easily done more than 600GB if I was around to start the next batch of downloads after the previous ones finished earlier than I expected)," boasted one user on the Whirlpool forum.
|
||
|
||
Not everyone was happy with the day's offering, with reports of slow speeds or interruption to data connections in some areas.
|
||
|
||
But sentiment across Telstra's customer base on social media was largely positive, with many reporting solid connections and speeds.
|
||
|
||
Telstra group managing director for networks Mike Wright said Sunday was Telstra's "busiest day ever" in terms of data traffic, doubling the usual amount across the network.
|
||
|
||
By midnight Sunday users had collectively chewed through 1841 terabytes of data — equivalent to around 2.3 million movies.
|
||
|
||
"As soon as midnight [Saturday] ticked over we saw traffic jump up," Mr Wright said.
|
||
|
||
"It reached weekday peak traffic levels by 8am and climbed rapidly from there.
|
||
|
||
"As we anticipated, the high demand meant some customers had slower than normal data speeds on 4G services, but overall the network performed as designed," Mr Wright said.
|
||
|
||
Mr Wright said Telstra hoped the offer made up for some of the inconvenience caused during the previous week's outage.
|
||
|
||
Some small businesses have not been happy with the free data compensation, which fell on a weekend, while the outage fell on a weekday, [causing some to lose money](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/businesses-out-of-pocket-after-telstras-nationwide-outage-20160209-gmpwiy.html).
|
||
|
||
More:
|
||
|
||
[Hannah Francis](http://www.smh.com.au/by/hannah-francis-1179zm)is an arts writer and former Age Arts Editor.Connect via
|
||
|
||
[X](http://x.com/han_francisco?lang=en).
|