Today, I’m excited to announce two new gateways – the Telstra Gateway Max 2 and Telstra Gateway Frontier

Exciting stuff from Telstra today. I don’t praise them often but credit where credit’s due!

And early 2017 we’ll launch Australia’s first ISP-supported hybrid gateway, the Telstra Gateway Frontier, which brings together Telstra’s mobile and fixed networks in one device to connect you quickly and keep you connected, even if your fixed line is unavailable.

So, if you’re moving house, this means you can use the gateway to connect to the internet using our mobile network while you wait for your fixed line service to be activated.

Drawing attention to the above two paragraphs, this is an interesting idea and one that I applaud Telstra for having. Now of course, the devil is in the detail and it comes down to how they choose to utilise this hybrid feature, and also how they choose to charge for it. However, it opens the door to solutions when Cable/NBN is down. I routinely read Tweets from people asking to be reimbursed for their 4G tethering/hotspot usage while their home Internet is down, or suggestions to allow for unlimited 4G usage during an outage. With this hybrid router, that is something which Telstra can be implemented seamlessly.

Planned outage? No worries, give the customer unlimited 4G through their router for that time. They wouldn’t notice the difference for the most part - their home Wi-Fi would run as it always does.

we have partnered with Australian consultancy Design + Industry to develop these gateways so you can proudly display them in your home

Ah, a router that looks half decent that you won’t want to hide! It kind of looks like a fan, but whatever, it’s decent. 👍🏻