Telstra subscribers in Australia will surely send the company's networks into overdrive again come April 3, Sunday, for the scheduled free data event.
Previous records hit 1,841 TB worth of data accessed and downloaded by subscribers during the last unlimited data browsing on February 14. This was roughly estimated at around 5.1 million copies of "Game of Thrones" episodes.
The upcoming event will be made available for all Telstra mobile subscribers, which include small businesses, global enterprise services, managed businesses, mobile broadband subscribers and prepaid customers with no active credit but still have a working service.
Free mobile data will start at exactly midnight (Sunday morning), and end at midnight (Sunday night) in each local time zone. Daylight saving time has been considered, which means 25 hours of unrestrained Internet browsing, streaming and downloading will be available. MMS messaging, on the other hand, is not included as it is part of call subscriptions.
Users who start browsing before April 3 won't be charged as soon as the event starts. The subscription will automatically end once the event ends at midnight.
Telstra CEO Andrew Penn issued an apology on the company's website for previous network outages that subscribers had experienced. Initial findings reported that the outages were caused by subscribers simultaneously disconnecting from their service and reconnecting at the same time. The massive traffic of sudden reconnections proved too heavy for the carrier, resulting in major disruptions in services.
This recent incident will be added to the pending overview of problems causing the network to crash. The company had earlier hired engineers and global network experts to determine the root cause of the problem after the events that led to the free data day on February 14.
"Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience we have caused. You expect seamless mobile service with Telstra and it is our responsibility to ensure that is delivered day in, day out," Penn wrote.
Photo: Mark Turner | Flickr
