EXCLUSIVE

HE SAID he’d never work for them, but the Telstra data guy made famous after downloading a terabyte of content has accepted a world first offer from Telstra he couldn’t resist — and one that might just blow the NBN out of the water.

Telstra reached out after discussions with news.com.au to offer John Szaszvari a day in their Telstra testing lab, after the 27-year-old network engineer downloaded $10,000 worth of free data on Telstra’s free data Sunday.

They hope to use Mr Szasvari to test wireless technology with speeds never seen before in this country.

“We’ve invited him to help us test our upcoming 1Gbps (1000 megabits per second) mobile broadband hotspot before we make it available to our customers,” a Telstra spokesman said.

“The device will be the first of its kind in the world and should be capable of speeds around three times faster than his current phone.

“We want to make sure our customers have the best possible experience, so if our customers are not happy with their current service we always ask them to reach out to us to see how we can improve their experience on Australia’s largest network.”

It came just two days after Mr Szasvari said, “I don’t think I’d ever work for them. Too much red tape and silly internal politics that don’t allow any real work to be done.

“I’m a guy who likes to get things done and make an impact with technology. Not have meetings about meetings.”

Mr Szasvari was in discussions yesterday with representatives from Telstra after he complained Telstra drove him to desperate measures due to their consistently poor lack of service.

“They gave me a fairly technical overview of the product,” he told news.com.au late yesterday.

“They mentioned to me they wanted to get me to test out the speeds, to try and push it to the limit so they can see what happens on their end.

“Quite frankly it sounds absolutely amazing. If they can pull off what they’re developing, I feel a bit odd saying this, but I feel it would change or impact the NBN debate quite significantly.

“The technology they’re talking about is very, very new, basically they’d be the first company in the entire world to do something with it.”

Mr Szaszvari has done an about face with the telco, after blaming the network for forcing him to resort to such drastic measures to download content.

He said: “I didn’t realise we had a company here that was working on something that advanced, it’s quite impressive to see they’ve picked the ball up.”

Though, he defended, “it doesn’t mean they’re the best company in Australia, they’re riducously expensive, their customer service is non-existent pretty much, and going into a Telstra store is quite possibly one of the most painful things you could do in your life.

“None of this would have ever happened if I had working, consistent internet in my house.”

Last week, the Sydneysider used the latest 4GX technology (which is more than double the traditional speeds) on his phone to tap into his laptop and use faster download speeds to maximise Telstra’s free data day last week, thanks to a massive outage that wreaked havoc on eight million consumers on March 18.

He downloaded free software, large backups, TV shows and movies, despite claiming his ADSL connection suffers at least 15 drop outs per day.

“The [Telstra] guy said to me, ‘It’s clear you don’t have a problem using a lot of data’.”

Yet Mr Szasvari remains sceptical about the technology, saying he’s not sure how Telstra could manage the speeds without crashing the network.

“I can’t figure out how people would contend with the bandwidth. Five or six people could easily max out a tower,” he said.

But, he said, “as much as people want to whinge and complain about Telstra’s problems their wireless network is one of the best in the world”.

Telstra said the technology wouldn’t be available to test for the next few months, but that “we are sure John will be able to test the modem to its full capacity”.

They said they were “surprised” by the amount of interest in the story but were “pleased that our network performed well during our free data day”.

Since he went public over the criticism he copped for apparently “causing slower download speeds for everyone else”, he says the country has backed off, and instead now call him a “hero”.

“I’m getting messages from people all over saying, ‘Good on you for sticking it to Telstra’, ‘you are my hero’, ‘you’re a f**king legend mate, f**k Telstra’.”

Telstra haven’t indicated when the technology will be available for public consumption, or how much it would be likely to cost.

— youngma@news.com.au