According to Telstra, the BigPond Velocity Home Network Gateway is specifically designed to work with the Telstra Velocity Network which supports speeds of up to 100Mbps into the home.

It features four Gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and is bundled with a separate 802.11n USB Wi-Fi adaptor which can be plugged into any computer with a USB port. It also comes with two USB ports that will allow customers to plug in an external USB storage device and share content on the device with laptops and PCs around the home.

"Actual speeds a single customer will get will depend on a variety of factors including customer equipment, server limitations, Wi-Fi reception/capacity, and so will be less than the total capacity into the home," says the company.

Also launched today is the ‘BigPond Ultimate Cable Home Network Gateway' which is specifically designed for DOCSIS 3.0 cable broadband. It features four Gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and is also bundled with a separate 802.11n USB Wi-Fi adaptor.

Both gateways come with a self-install CD, a feature called Wireless Protected Setup (WPS) that makes connecting new WPS enabled devices to the Gateway over Wi-Fi easy, and a unique security key which offers Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2) protection standard.

The gateways are compatible with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 systems.