Telstra

That's the problem Allan, my wife recently changed to a $19 Aldi plan from Telstra, they use the telstra towers and she has noticed no difference, but we have not yet gone remote.
I am still paying $67 a month on my old business plan that it is very difficult to transfer but for $48 a month I'll go to the effort if the remote service is still acceptable.

Qldcamper

It’s a year or so ago but a friend was with the Aldi service. In the cbd in Albany WA in line of sight with the Telstra tower she had no signal. We had a laugh.
Most of the rest of the time in country towns was ok.
But not as good as the real thing which I have.

Cheers

.
Hi Rocco,
Just because Aldi uses Telstra as their carrier does not necessarily mean that there are Aldi services on every Telstra tower.

There are only a couple of Telstra Resellers that have access to the entire Telstra Network. Boost Mobile is one, they have recently been sold to Telstra I think. You are better off if going remote, to use Telstra.

Macca.

Macca, who is the other reseller that has access to the full Telstra network?

As far as I know most companies that use Telstra towers don't give you full coverage. I think Boost is the only one that does, and last time I checked weren't much cheaper than Telstra.

I’m with Boost…full Telstra coverage, $230/year.
Will probably go up this year, but still a lot cheaper than Telstra.

I switched from Telstra to Boost a few years ago. There was a good price saving back then. Hoo, Boost prices have slowly been increasing. My last 12 month recharge with Boost was the same price as Telstra.

Switched to Boost several years ago. Less than half the price of Telstra if you go with Boost's yearly plan. The price has increased, so has the data allocation from more than I needed to much more. Check out the various options on their website. They have some restrictions on eSIMS, they can't be used on watches.

Yackandandah, I must pay some attention to the changes when it's renewal time if Telstra branded plans are now competitive. We'll be using our Starlink mini from now on, so perhaps a cheap and cheerful provider will suffice rather than effectively paying twice or in reality more than thrice at $195pm for an unlimited Starlink roaming plan.

It appears that there are FUTURE plans for Elon to supply the satellite/Starlink network to Telstra customers who choose such a plan.
Technology!!

As I understand it the Telstra/Elon arrangement will have a restricted speed significantly lower than Starlink, which may or may not be important for individual users.

Cuppa, there are two different types of access, currently you can get a Starlink sat dish connection via Telstra. Useful to some people who are in an area with a wait list for a Starlink residential connection. This is the throttled connection. A yet to be rolled out service is a direct phone to satellite connection. I think in the USA it's available with some phone companies.

Ah, that's interesting Warren. Technology is speeding along & bringing more choices. Hopefully there may be an alternative to Elon on the future map, but for now he is the only option for remote mobile internet. I did see some mention of a poyential alternative service somewhere, but I thin it eas more of a 'maybe' than a 'when'.

Sorry QC, just adding to the off topic stuff, it may interest a few.

Cuppa

Perhaps this is what you are thinking of.

Kuiper

Regards

TrevorDavid

Kuiper Systems

Thuraya once said a similar thing. Now I have a 700 dollar paperweight.
See what happens when Elon sells starlink to the Chinese.
Let's stay on topic shall we.

.
Stephen, they are making my superannuation funds obsolete too.

Qldcamper

Elon is not Thuraya and why would he want to sell his X to the Chinese when he is already the richest man in the world?

I still have a good satellite phone that is not a paper weight, and as for your silly statement…..”let’s stay on topic shall we”, I think you need to be educated about modern communications in the 21st Century.

Have you ever heard of Starlink?……….and what it has done to thousands of people already around Australia and the world, giving them full internet access where other carriers can not supply as basic service that everyone expects today.

The question was about phone reception in remote WA mining sites and who else in the world can give you 100% reliable internet and phone service anywhere in Australia?

Starlink will give you the ability to have all your home internet and phone service anywhere in the most remotest deserts area,

So my original reply still stands and is 100% valid, if anyone wants the ability to use internet and make phone calls anywhere, then Starlink is the only option at this stage in Australia.

.
Hey Stephen, "Why would Elon want to sell his X to the Chinese?"
To pay his US taxes of course. lol. lol, lol.

To weigh in on this suggestion that Starlink make Satphones obsolete ....... Yes & No.

I believe that this will become the reality in the not too distant future, once mobile phone to low orbiting satellites becomes a reliable 'norm'.

Currently Starlink with all it's benefits comes close, but is not quite there yet IMHO.

That said it is 'close enough' for me to largely place my faith in it for emergency comms. Note 'largely', not 'completely'.

Let me explain. There are several drawbacks with Starlink as far as emergency comms go.

1. Bearing in mind that we have the larger Gen 3 Starlink which is not as portable as the mini, & requires the power system of our truck to operate it, it's no good for bushwalking away from the vehicle like a satphone is. Given that we also now have a Thuraya 'brick', our solution is to carry a PLB and an iphone with access to emergency sat based text messaging. A mini whilst supposedly portable is I would suggest, unlikely to be carried in a backpack along with a power supply by most bushwalkers most of the time. It is too bulky. (In the past we often didn't even carry our PLB as it was a bulky 'extra' in addition to water/first aid/camera/hand held GPS etc. Now we have a shirt pocket sized PLB ).

2.When at the truck, setting up the Starlink takes time.Dish out, connect, & fire it up. The firing it up can take 5 to 15 minutes at a new location. So overall it can take up to say 25 minutes to establish a connection which is less than ideal in a stressful emergency situation. Neverless it is a restriction we have chosen to accept in lieu of buying another satphone.

3.My wife pointed out another issue with our setup. Were we to tip our truck onto it's side, passenger side, not only would we be unable to get into the motorhome to access the dish, but we would also be unable to access the plug in point for the dish, also on the passenger side. In the event of a scenario like this we again would need to rely on the PLB & the iphone's limited sat capability, both of which are carried in the cab.

When cellphones gain satellite effective voice capability then Starlink (or similar) will fully replace & possibly improve upon current generation satphones. Until then we have the choice to have a set up with a few limitations or to have a satphone (which are also not 100% reliable in all situations). Travelling alone in remote areas is not without risk & those of us who do so need to feel comfortable with our own individual risk evaluation.

Hi Cuppa

Have you actually seen in the flesh a Starlink Mini?

They are a completely different ball game to its Gen 2 and 3.

They run off the smell of an oily rag, something that the bigger units can not do.

The new Mini’s have the modem inbuilt into the dish, so again saving weight and space.

As far as being portable, that’s what the are designed for, lightweight and small.

If yours takes 25 minutes to setup, I would be ditching it, the Mini is so quick and from the very first time I received it, fired it up, software update, and add all your details, it was less than 10 minutes and and, I just power it up, face the dish south and within a minute and internet.


As for power, I have a 12v to 48v step up converter from my dual battery in the back of the Ute. Then being small enough to put in a small backpack, I have an adapter that goes on one of my Bosch 18v cordless batteries that will run the dish for a couple of hours well enough time if in an emergency.

Comparing it with my Inmarsat satellite phone that still works, the Starlink will acquire satellites quicker, connect to my iPhone and make a Wi Fi phone call before the Inmarsat is ready.

So going by my personal use, my still good Inmarsat will never ever be used for the convenience of the Mini, as well as the satellite phone can not do FaceTime.

Stephen if what you have suits you that is all that matters. I just don't think it's a 'one size fits all' solution.

My Gen 3 often fires up more quickly than the 25 minutes, but we have found that the time it takes to boot up can vary considerably, especially when firing up for the first time at a new location. The most recent in a large forest clearing surrounded by tall trees. Although the app didn't show obstructions, it did need the dish to be well outside it's setup rectangle. That sort of mucking around took time, but once set up we still had speeds over 300MBs.

The Mini has a narrower field of view for the satellites, so I find it hard to believe that you wont find satellite aquisition at least as variable as I have done, if not more so.

No I haven't seen one in the flesh, but requiring a back pack plus battery, in addition to what we already carry when bushwalking would be too much for me (with back & neck issues) but if it suits you that's good.

So far I'm very happy with our Gen3 generally, although it's fair to say that were I buying now, I think the Mini would be very worthy of consideration, just not as a 100% replacement for a satphone, for us.

I bought our Gen 3 just weeks before the Mini came out. During that time there was a lot of talk about it & much of that centred around how far the signal would reach. In practice, since wider adoption of the Mini, that seems to be largely a non issue for most travellers. Were I considering changing (which I'm not) the main (only) issue of concern I would have would be the need to set up the dish (with it's inbuilt router) outside & getting a signal inside our mobile faraday cage. Our walls, floor & ceiling are all 70mm aluminium honeycomb panel. With the gen 3 we can have the dish outside & the router inside.

.
Zippo, see that little white patch in the middle of the Qld Sunshine Coast….. That's my house.

Geez, you picked a communications black spot!

And Telstra has now bought Boost, so plan prices could change.

My experience is the same as others, if you only carry one SIM then it has to be Telstra or Boost. But Optus coverage has been getting better, and as Zippo said, there are remote places with Optus only coverage. Anyone been to Noccundra lately? So if you want to have two bob each way then carry one of each. Or go for the trifecta and carry Starlink as well.

The original question was partly about throttling of Telstra resellers. It is sometimes claimed that Boost got less network priority than a genuine Telstra SIM, but I've never seen any hard evidence of that, and it's not my experience. But it would not surprise me that resellers on the wholesale network did.

Stephen I asked a question and appriciate the feedback on that subject.
I also appriciate your offer to lecture us all on starlink but I have no need or interest to stay that well connected, hence the title of this thread is telstra, not starlink.
If you wish to educate the masses on starlink feel free to start a thread on it.
But if you have anything to add on the topic of telstra that has not already been covered in some very well informed replies please feel free to do so.
I think it is called staying on topic, if this term offends you suck it up.

My understanding is that Telstra have always owned Boost

Howfree, that's not the case. They were "joined at the hip" all along, with Telstra providing the back-end accounting etc services. But the sale was only a recent thing. See here on Wikipedia

Thanks Derek. I'm still not sure what you mean .......... does a regular Telstra sim , not a business one , still work better in the outback than the cheaper carriers ? This is what I would assume to be the case.

Cheers
Jim

Thanks Derek,
That answers a strange phenomenon that has been happening to us for years.

My wife & I both use the same plan as it offers good Australia-wide coverage at a reasonable price.

We decided to go with Telstra rather than Boost purely for the convenience of being able to visit a Telstra store when travelling should we have any issues.

Here in WA Boost appears to have an online presence only which is fine if all works well however it a PITA to troubleshoot issues over the phone, much rather talk directly with someone in a physical store.

Only downside as far as I can see is that the total annual data allowance might not be big enough for some users & any data remaining at the end of the 12-month period doesn’t get rolled over unlike on the shorter term plans.

Telstra is currently offering an additional 95GB of data on that plan for new customers until about the 10th March.