4G phones as "Hot Spots"
I have used my phone while traveling as a "hot spot" for my IPad but hadn't realised ' til now how much faster downloads were with a 4G phone as a modem.
apparently our landline modem downloads are very slow compared to the U.S. and and other countries and will not be improved by the NBN if/when we get it.
Both my son and daughter who need to upload/download very large files as part of their work do so using their IPhones on which they have very very
large Data allowances as part of their plans in preference to slow land modems land lines.
Just be aware if you use your phone as a hotspot for downloading Movies and haven't got huge Data allowance it will very quick but end up costing you a fortune if you exceed your limit, hundreds of dollars in Australia in fact.
Shane Rodgers
Queensland editor
The lives of Australians are converging ever further into their mobile phones, with data downloading almost doubling in a single year and mobile phone ownership reaching population saturation point.
Internet activity figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the number of terabytes of data downloaded on mobiles jumped from 27,627 to 52,745 between 2013 and last year.
The growth represents a tenfold increase in data accessed via mobile since 2011 and a more rapid acceleration of the trend towards accessing a wide range of internet activity through portable devices.
The figures also show the number of mobile subscriptions hit 21 million last year, against a national population of 23 million. This represents an extra 10 million mobiles in circulation since 2011. While some of the subscriptions would reflect people having separate phones for work and personal use, the figures add weight to research suggesting mobile phone use is strong among children.
Telstra research released this month showed children as young as three were being given mobiles and 68 per cent of those aged 12 to 17 had their own smartphones.
In 2014, internet data downloaded in Australia across all devices passed one million terabytes for the first time, an increase of nearly 286,000 terabytes in one year.
The growth in internet subscribers was based entirely on household and individual accounts. Subscriptions held by business and government fell from 2.7 million to 2.6 million over the 12 months.
Telstra Mobile Products executive director John Chambers said the increased mobile data use was mostly due to the growing prevalence of video on mobile phones.
He said, although there had been strong growth, substantially more growth was to come. “I think it is a bit more ahead of us than behind us,” he said.
“As usage evolves we expect to see constant increases in data requirements. At the moment a lot of people who used to text are moving to video experiences associated with that behaviour and that is adding to the data requirement.”
Many were upgrading plans to access higher monthly data and Telstra had added packages this week to more easily ratchet up data allowances when consumer went over core usage.
Mr Chambers said providers would expect to have to gear up for a future with vastly greater data needs.
We are supposed to get NBN FTTN technology this year.
I've just checked and the information looks promising