On the Forestdale Facebook page,

“Brad Noble Our Forestdale Community (Australia)

Apr 11

Does anyone in Forestdale have an Optus mobile phone service? If so, what's the service like? I'm weighing up options at the moment, but not sure what Optus service is like through here.

Cheers”

You have not said what you want to use a mobile phone service for?

Complete replacement for a landline, phone calls only, internet only or combination of the 2.

If a completely replacement for a land line, and also using it for internet access, based on my experience and others that have tried it, I would advise against it. Mobile phone data usage shares the same Tower with everybody else in the area, whereas landline internet is shared with only a smaller number of people. Technically data across fiber Optic cables is much faster than radio (mobile) data communication.

As others have said it completely depends on where physically you live and even where within you home you are using your phone.

I have a TPG SIM card, which uses the Optus network and a Aldi SIM card, which uses PART of the Telstra network, both in my phone at the same time. It's a duel SIM phone.

The Aldi one works most of the time, but then I also have WIFI calling switched on for it, so if the mobile data signal is bad it will revert to WiFi. But that also has issues with my hearing aids. See below.

The TPG one on the Optus network mostly does not work, in most places in our house. However if I stand at our bedroom window, sometimes if can receive a SMS message. It does not have the ability to use WiFi calling. If you have a direct deal with Optus you may be able to use WiFi calling. You would need to ask Optus, if you can find someone that fully understands such a question.

When I'm at the top of our driveway both SIM cards work ok. At the tower near the shops in Forestdale or at Browns plains, both have excellent reception.

I have a TPG supplied Gateway/router in our office at one end of the house and a Netgear WiFi extender in the middle of the house. Each has 2 WiFi frequencies, the 2.4GHz and 5GHz, so 4 wifi networks that the over 20 WiFi devices we have that we can connect to.

Depending on where we are in the house will seriously effect the performance on these networks. For example in our main ensite that has large mirrors on 2 walls the reception can be very flukey. I discovered recently, closing the sliding door to the ensuite, it improved WiFi performance dramatically when I was in our bedroom.

Likewise at the end of the opposite end of house to the gateway/router, there is practically no Wi-Fi reception.

In between these 2 places it depends on the physical location. As an example just the other day I had a weekly video call and connection was really bad. On checking the internet speed it was okay. I realise I was sitting at a different couch in the lounge room. On moving to where I normally sit for the call, the connection improved.

I have to wear hearing aids and they have Bluetooth functionality such that I can speak and hear through my hearing aids.

However when I do this with a phone call goes through Wi-Fi calling, the sound is completely distorted. If I switch off the Bluetooth and put it to the phone speaker it works perfectly. Likewise if I switch off Wi-Fi calling and still use the Bluetooth hearing aids the sound is perfect.

In looking this up on the Internet I've discovered that it is a problem that was reported over 10 years ago. And has not been fixed.

Using a Facebook Messenger or similar non mobile phone call, that uses both Wi-Fi and bluetooth at the same time works perfectly. So it's completely a software problem to do with a combination of Wi-Fi calling and bluetooth.

If you're considering Optus as opposed to Telstra, from a cost point of view you use neither. There are many third party mobile phone providers who's charges are can be less than Telstra or Optus.

Often I think my internet connection is not working correctly, only to discover that it is the problem with the specific service or web page I'm connected to.

Even the biggest guys around have such a problem.

For example I can be playing a YouTube video (YouTube is owned by Google and is most likely the biggest data service around) and find its stuttering all the time. Then staying on the same service, YouTube, and playing a different, even a higher resolution video, it plays perfectly alright.

Over the years I have used Telstra, Optus, 3 mobile and TPG. I've had administrative difficulties with all of them. But the worst would have to have been Telstra. However that was quite some time ago and perhaps they've changed.

You could get the best mobile coverage or reception, put that can be useless if from an administrative point of view they do something stupid and cut off your account or provide you no way of contacting them when you have an outage.

Your question brought up a lot of factors that could to be taken into account.

But just do what makes you feel the best. That's the main thing that matters.