Qantas and Optus have completed a nationwide and almost year-long overhaul of wireless Internet at the Red Roo's Aussie airport lounges.
And it's fast.
On recent visits to the Qantas Business Lounge in Sydney we've clocked around 20Mbps, even during morning and evening peak periods, as measured using the free Speedtest.net service.
And check out the upload speeds, which are usually the poor cousin of the downlink – but here it's almost 50% quicker, making for smooth Skype videochat sessions as well as sending big files back to the server before you hope on your flight.
The speeds eclipse most home Internet connections, and are certainly among the zippiest airport lounge Internet feeds we've ever experienced.
It's all the sweeter compared to the slow and often not-even-working service which frequent flyers had to tolerate under the previous Qantas-Telstra lounge Internet partnership.
Although Qantas' Sydney lounges were first to get the turbocharge treatment in November 2011, Canberra was completed only last month, an Optus spokesperson tells Australian Business Traveller.
Optus has boosted overall Internet capacity being fed to the lounge and installed the latest 802.11n-grade wireless kit (you'll see these small flat white boxes with their subtle blue lights dotted around the ceiling of each lounge), capable of delivering rapid and reliable signals throughout the lounge.
The extraordinary popularity of tablets has no doubt put a strain on lounge wi-fi networks so it's good to see that Optus has gone for a high-speed system with plenty of headroom.
Qantas is also now offering free wireless Internet at its terminals at Sydney (T3), Melbourne (T1), Brisbane and Perth domestic airports, so you don't ever need to be a lounge lizard to enjoy a dose of speedy surfing before or after your flight.
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David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
01 Jul 2011
Total posts 11
Perth has nice speeds this morning, 22mb/s download speed. Has gone down a bit as the lounge has filled up though, which is to be expected.
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