After four massive network failures consumers have been given free data today and they are taking to it like free beer in a pub and guess what, the Telstra network is struggling to keep up with demand.

Due to daylight saving some consumers will get 25 hours of

free downloads 

This free data day is Telstra’s way of compensating

customers for four serious network failures during the past two months.

Earlier today I tried to download a YouTube video and the

Telstra 4G network struggled. Earlier in the day my calls out kept dropping

back to the Telstra 3G network despite the area I was in being a strong 4G area

for Telstra.

On the previous free in February 14, Telstra customers

downloaded 1,841 terabytes of data, or the equivalent of 2.3 million movies.

This was the “busiest day ever”, according to managing director of

networks, Mike Wright.

Reddit forums were reporting early bird consumers were

getting “reasonable” speeds but as the day progressed speeds dropped

“right off”. 

One social network user said that he was getting 59 megabits

per second [Mbps] at 12.30am (about five times faster than a good fixed

internet connection), but this had dropped to 4.8 Mbps by 10.30am.

Fairfax Media said that user sony4life has a 4G connection

and normally sees 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload speeds, which are quite

fast speeds.

However, by lunchtime on Sunday he was averaging 35 Mbps in

both directions.

He was using several Telstra sim cards to download

“mostly games and patches, some video archives and uploading of video and

pics” and expects to use about 300 GB of data on Sunday.