I signed up for Optus offers 4G Plus Home Broadband, and it’s awesome
After writing about Optus' new Home Broadband plans last night, I have kept my word and been into Optus today (Hi, Optus Hornsby staff!) and signed up for a new Optus Home Broadband 500GB plan. After an initial bit of confusion (I tried to open a Business account but was told I can't without a printed letterhead giving me permission to do so … from myself), the sign-up process was painless and easy, and now I'm all set up!
The process is extremely simple, especially compared to signing up with traditional fixed-line broadband providers.
Here's how it looks signing up as a brand-new Optus customer – note, if you're an existing customer, it might be easier still:
- Provide 100 points of ID (drivers licence, Medicare card, etc)
- Provide basic details – where you live, your employment, etc
- Confirm whether you want the 200GB or 500GB plan
- Confirm whether you want month-by-month (with upfront $192 modem cost) or 24-month plan (no modem cost)
- Sign on the dotted line
- Walk out with your new modem
This whole process took about twenty minutes. Upon getting back to your home or office, setting up the modem is equally easy; simply open the bottom of the modem and insert the Optus SIM, power on the modem, and you're ready to rock and roll.
As you can see, I've got the modem set up on my office window, and even here with fairly poor signal, I'm getting some crazy fast speeds out of it:
That's just shy of 80Mbps downstream, and 5.5Mbps upstream and we're in a bit of a signal black hole here. Our apartment – where the Optus Home Broadband modem will end up – is four storeys' high and we generally get excellent mobile signal at home. I'm expecting something a bit quicker still.
In answer to some questions people have asked:
- Can you use the Optus Home Broadband SIM in your mobile or other device? The answer, it seems, is no. It doesn't work in my mobile. It looks as if it'll work in the supplied modem only.
- Is it speed limited? Only by technical limits rather than any artificially imposed – I'd expect with good signal on a cell tower that isn't oversubscribed you could easily exceed 100Mbps here.
- Can you use your Vividwireless modem as a BYO and get a SIM-only option? It appears, for now, the answer is no – this might require some further clarification from Optus.
That said, you probably want to use Optus' supplied modem instead of something else. It's a category 6 LTE device which means it's going to be significantly faster than the Vividwireless modem which is Cat4 LTE only.
Let me know if you've got any other questions and I'll do my best.
Last modified on 12 December 2018 3:12 pm
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