Thread: Telstra 4G Wifi modem

This might be of help for travellers,
after having worked for Telstra for 30 years I had a pretty good idea of what my comms setup would be and it sure did not include a Telstra 4G Wifi (pocket) Modem.

But I did buy one so that we could upload our blog when in towns.
I usually use a 3G phone connected to a NextG Broomstick antenna on a extendable (swimming pool) pole and then use the phone as a WiFi hotspot.



The pole gives about 20 klm extra phone range as compared to bullbar mounted broomstick,

But where we are camped at present between two ridges (about 50km south of Cloncurry) we have phone on the pole mounted broomstick but signal is too weak for internet.

I had an idea to carry the 4G modem to the top of a ridge just incase its wifi signal was strong enough to get to the van, to my surprise not only got full 3G telstra signal but My laptop in the van also gets full wifi reception from the Modem which I left on top of the hill,



The Modem is in a plastic bag ( I thought it might rain) taped to my tripod and a fold up USB solar charger is keeping it battery topped up



Latency just now 87ms download =5.05mbs upload = 1.75 , not bad for the bush.

I had a slightly similar idea a while back for getting e-mails etc when out of town.

I bought one of these down in Perth from a Telstra shop.



Cost me about $70 which included a month's pre-paid credit. When the credit ran out, I threw out the SIM card and replaced it with one that I had on a business plan out of my old lap-top, and have since used this device for new laptop / iPad and various other devices.

I also had a Blackberry work phone up until recently, and had installed a car cradle with inductive coil aerial connection to a 9dB aerial on the bullbar of the D4.

As it happens, the Telstra 4G modem fits nicely into the Blackberry cradle, and uses the same cable for charging - and the inductive coil antenna connection works just as well with the modem as it did with the Blackberry phone (bonus).

So now when we're out in the bush and want to receive / send e-mails etc - I simply plug the old Blackberry cradle into the antenna connection (after disconnecting the iPhone cradle from it), and use the Telstra 4G modem for internet connection. Works brilliantly - and we've so far been very surprised with where we can get good signal using this.

Of course, I realize that I could do the same with the iPhone, but the SIM in the modem is on a much cheaper data plan than the iPhone is (and the iPhone account is paid for by my work). It's also a bit of a bonus for us still having the Blackberry cradle in the car, as while I've recently changed to an iPhone for both work and private phone / e-mail etc, SWMBO still uses a Blackberry for her business - so she can also use her phone in the cradle.