Telstra's mobile broadband breaks speed barrier; declared world's fastest by Guinness World Records

The Telstra NextG network was yesterday declared the world's fastest mobile broadband network by the Guinness World Records after turning up the peak network speeds to a blistering 21 Mbps.

Overnight at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, unveiled the world's fastest mobile broadband device - the Turbo 21 modem - which connected to the Telstra Next G network and achieved speeds four times faster than those from other Australian telecommunications companies.

Customers using the Turbo 21 modem in enabled areas will experience download speeds ranging from 550 Kbps to 8 Mbps. This is the second time Telstra has been awarded a Guinness World Record for the fastest national broadband network - the first was in 2007 when Telstra recorded record speeds of 14.4 Mbps.

The Turbo 21 modem is the world's first commercial 21 Mbps peak rated mobile broadband modem and will be available to some business customers from 23 February with consumer and full business availability in the coming months.

But Optus, its rival rubbished the claims made by Telstra saying that customers will need to buy a new modem and live/work beneath a base station to take advantage of these 'theoretical' speeds.

It also said that the current 14.4Mbps speed offered by Telstra on Next G, has not benefited a single Telstra customer as modems have not been made available while another critic said that it is great to have high speed but if you cannot use it, then there is no point in achieving this speed.

Guinness World Records yesterday confirmed that the network's speed has been tested and that it sets a new world record for wireless broadband speed.

"It is great to see an Australian company leading the way globally in the telecommunications industry," said Sheedy the Australian representative of the Guinness World Records, "I've witnessed amazing records around the globe, but this is the first time I've had the honour of announcing a record which delivers such tangible benefits to an entire nation."

But the greatest news is that it is Telstra's customers who will be the winners as they will be the first in the world to experience true real-time mobile broadband," Ms Young said. "With the largest range of mobile content in Australia as well as access to unique and unmetered Telstra BigPond® content, the new Turbo 21 modem gives customers access to news, movies, music and sport in real-time.

"These record breaking speeds mean it can take only six seconds to download a two megabyte video from BigPond or four seconds for a song. These new speeds will also be a boost for Australian business that can use the Turbo 21 modem to help save time, cut costs and increase productivity," Ms Young said.

"We've supercharged the Next G network to a peak network speed of 21 Mbps using HSPA+ technology but this is just the beginning," Group managing director Michael Rocca said. "Later this year, Australians will see peak network downlink speeds increase even further to 42 Mbps on parts of the Telstra Next G network."