In a statement, Optus said the chosen suburbs were Bonnyrigg and Minchinbury in Sydney’s west, Niagara Park on the NSW Central Coast, Cook in the ACT and Kenmore outside Brisbane, adding that it had more than 70 sites that were 5G ready.

The customers were selected following a campaign seeking expressions of interest which was launched in January.

Optus Networks managing director Dennis Wong said the first commercial Optus 5G Home Broadband service in Glendenning in Sydney’s west had already achieved peak download speeds of 295Mbps and an average download speed of 100Mbps.

“Our peak download speed achieved at our launch in the ACT in January demonstrated download speeds of 170Mbps, so a 50% increase in peak speeds in just a few months shows the rapid evolution and advancement of the 5G ecosystem, which is exciting news for Optus customers,” he said.

Optus is testing five different 5G devices on the network including two mobile handsets and three CPEs (customer premise equipment) or home hubs.

Wong said while 5G would be a transformative technology, Optus 5G Home Broadband was initially being used for "traditional purposes".

“Our first customers are currently using 5G for video downloads, Internet connectivity and browsing but we see exciting 5G consumer applications in the future including a much richer AR and VR gaming experience and improved in-home device connectivity," he said.

“Despite being in its infancy, we are already gaining valuable insights into the new 5G technology. The technology has matured rapidly over the last few months with more devices being 5G enabled and we are getting a better understanding of how to best tune the technology to improve performance.

“We are also gaining valuable insights around how to adjust our network and its technical features to support interoperability of multiple devices – meaning that a variety of devices from different manufacturers will work on different vendor network hardware.”