How do I use my phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot?

Network diagnostics is a feature in the My Telstra app which can help us improve the network performance in your area.

When the feature is turned on, it sends network performance diagnostics from your mobile device to our engineers securely and anonymously, giving only the identity and location of the network you are connected to.

Network conditions are read off your device when you accept the Android, iPadOS or iOS permissions, such as location, phone state or notifications, and allow the My Telstra app to always run in the background. 

The network conditions collected are:

• Radio signal strength and quality
• Mobile data connection - Yes/No
• Network response time to a generic internet page (latency)
• Network identifier element and its location 

The information collected from our network and towers via the network diagnostics from a device connected to our mobile network, helps us identify areas with:

• patchy coverage
• poor data connectivity and
• slow internet speeds

Our engineers use this information to adjust network elements and add new small mobile cells to help to improve our mobile network coverage.

1.       Go to the My Telstra app home screen

2.       Select the ‘profile icon’ in the top right

3.       Go to ‘Manage your profile’ and select ‘App settings’

4.       Go to ‘Network diagnostics’ and toggle the switch to on 

5.       Permissions will be requested using the Android, iPadOS or iOS permissions such as phone state, notifications and location and to allow the app to always run in the background

Note: Android device permissions may ask you to ‘allow, make or manage calls’, in order to access your mobile network diagnostics information, we will not use this permission to make or manage calls.

The impact to your battery is negligible and when your battery has less than 25% charge, network diagnostics will automatically pause.

No data charges apply when you’re connected to the Telstra mobile network.

When you’re not connected to a Telstra network, around 20KB per day (<1MB per month) of your mobile data allowance will be used.

Yes, the data collected is de-identified, and all personal information including your mobile number is removed.

No, no user activities like phone calls or app usage are monitored. The only data collected by network diagnostics is:

• Radio signal strength and quality
• Mobile data connection Yes/No
• Network response time to a generic internet page (latency)
• Network identifier element and its location 

Yes, you can toggle between off and on in the My Telstra app. 

To turn off network diagnostics:

1.       Go to the My Telstra app home screen

2.       Select the ‘profile icon’ in the top right

3.       Go to ‘Manage your profile’ and select ‘App settings’

4.       Go to ‘Network diagnostics’ and toggle the switch to off.

The data is kept in Telstra’s Australian data storage and can only be accessed by our engineers.