Last Tuesday Telstra suffered a technical glitch, putting much of their network offline.  To apologise, they made Sunday February 14 Free Data Day.  Telstra customers in Australia were able to use as much mobile data as they wanted, for free, no caps, no other limits.

Free mobile data notification from Telstra

Social media was a buzz with people boasting about how much they were downloading for free.  For me, I was more interested in uploading.  ADSL home broadband internet, while reasonable for downloads, is horribly slow for uploads.  Telstra’s mobile data network, on the other hand, usually as high speeds for both Up and Down-loads.

For the Free Data Day, I unplugged my computer from the ADSL modem and tethered my iPhone to use the mobile data on my Desktop PC.  For about 23 hours I synced as much photo and video data as I could to Microsoft OneDrive, which gives me an online cloud backup.  My total data for the day included 142GB backed up to OneDrive, around 3GB uploaded to my SmugMug photo sites, plus regular use.  That much data would normally take more than a month to upload via ADSL, or to use that much mobile data on any other day would cost $1400 in excess charges.

Thank you Telstra!