Telstra has thrown open the floodgates on mobile data for all its customers today in recompense for an embarrassing outage last month.

But what do you do with your newfound power of unmetered downloads for the day?

Well, you hook up your phone to your PC via the wifi hotspot option in settings and let the downloads fly, of course!

For some people, they will be able to get download speeds using the 4G network that are many times the speed they get over their home ADSL2+ connections, while others may find the Telstra network cripplingly slow as more and more users clog up the network.

Your mileage may vary. Be sure to check out Telstra's FAQ on whether you qualify for free data.

For Telstra, today will not just be a PR exercise but a massive test of its network that will provide useful diagnostic information on its capabilities.

Here we go:

1. Download Wikipedia

Yep. You can download the entire online encyclopedia of human history and knowledge.

Should you want an offline, searchable copy of Wikipedia for personal use or if society collapses, you can download it to keep it safe on a hard drive or the little thumb drive you carry around.

It is only 12GB in size.

Be sure to look up how to open and read the Wikipedia download as there are a number of tools available that will make sense of the database.

2. Backup your photo library to the cloud

You can upload your photos and videos to the cloud. ( Supplied: Google )

Google will give you unlimited cloud storage space if you use its Google Photos app on iOS or Android.

The app will allow you to automatically backup all your pictures and videos to its servers, like a big storage locker.

You can then delete them from your phone to save storage space if you wish.

There are also other online storage services such as Dropbox, iCloud and MEGA for backing up your important files, but none of them have an unlimited free storage option.

3. Download all your Steam games

If you consider yourself a PC gamer you probably have a pretty big library of video games on Steam.

During the first free data day in February one user downloaded 421GB of data, with a big chunk of that coming from Steam.

He downloaded all his games to a removable hard drive so he had a backup archive and did not need to have them all taking up space on his computer.

4. Download free-to-play games

There are many extremely popular online video games you can download that are free to play.

Some of these games are pretty massive in size though, so an unlimited download cap and super fast 4G speeds might work to your advantage.

The legendary Facing Worlds map on the new free-to-play Unreal Tournament. ( Supplied: Epic Games )

Here are some suggestions for games available on Steam at no charge:

Dota 2

Dota 2 Team Fortress 2

Team Fortress 2 Warframe

Warframe Path of Exile

Path of Exile Smite

Smite Planetside 2

Planetside 2 Lord of the Rings Online

How about some other non-Steam games:

Unreal Tournament (the new one)

Unreal Tournament (the new one) Heroes of the Storm

Heroes of the Storm Hearthstone

5. Torrents

It almost goes without saying that with a fast download speed and no data cap you will be able to turn your attention to torrents.

There are plenty of legal torrents for you to download, and after a bit of a web search you can find a lot of freely released music and movies.

There are also freeware video games, some of them dating back to the DOS days in the 90s, that you can download as big collections.

6. Stream TV shows in 4K

There are a few prerequisites you need for this: a 4K TV or monitor, at least a 25 megabit per second connection speed, and a Netflix TV app or Blu-Ray player that supports 4K streaming.

Connect your 4K TV to the internet via a wifi hotspot on your Telstra-powered mobile phone, then launch the Netflix app on your TV and find some Ultra HD titles to watch.

A lot of Netflix's own titles like House of Cards, Daredevil and Orange Is The New Black are available in Ultra HD 4K.

And of course, even if you do not have a 4K TV you can stream regular quality shows via Netflix, Stan, Presto or any other platform via your mobile phone with no impact on your data.

Time to go on a TV binge ... provided Telstra's network holds up.