Telstra’s Free Data Dude Hears Your Outrage; Reckons You’re Just Jelly

Yesterday it was revealed that an enterprising Sydneysider had taken advantage of Telstra’s Free Data Day on April 3 to the tune of 994GB.

That amounted to about $10,000 worth of data.

Understandably, people had feelings about this!

While some celebrated 27-year-old John Szasvari for taking the opportunity to download 24 seasons of The Simpsons and the entire Wikipedia database (just because), others blamed him specifically for Sunday’s sluggish internet service... especially after he posted his usage to Reddit, home of all reasonable online conversations.

Speaking to News Ltd., Szasvari has basically used the ol’, “they hate us ‘cos they ain’t us” defence.

“I’m getting a stupid amount of messages on Facebook, including abuse saying, ‘You ruined it for everyone, you abused the service,’” he said.

“I think maybe they’re jealous because they didn’t download that much.”

Szasvari noted that only about 40 per cent of his downloaded content was pirated. The rest, he argued, was made up of legitimate downloads, like Microsoft software updates. He also uploaded photos and videos to the cloud and conducted a Spotify library sync.

“At the end of the day the bottom line is I wouldn’t download this if I had a decent connection at home and could stream Netflix properly,” he argued, returning the blame for Sunday’s slow speeds to Telstra.

“It’s not my responsibility, it’s Telstra’s to manage that bandwidth. It’s up to them, it’s not up to the user, as rude as it sounds but that’s not my concern.”

Szasvari lives near a 4GX mobile tower, which gives him download speeds faster than 4G. Over the weekend, he enjoyed an average download speed of around 180Mbps.

Photo: News Ltd.