Telstra has officially announced its new line up of Bigpond internet plans by slashing prices and introducing new bundling options. The plans are fairly competitive but still have a long way to go before they catch up with pricing structures of Internode, iiNet, TPG and so on.
The biggest change is that there are now two succinct speed choices. The slowest plans you can now choose from are their "Turbo" plans which are a minimum speed of 1500/256. The other category is the "Elite" plans which are either up to 8000/364 (ADSL1+) or up to 20,000/1000 (ADSL2+) where available.
Telstra has also introduced new bundling options, where the more Telstra services you have, the greater the discount on your Internet. For example, bundling a Telstra HomeLine, Mobile and Foxtel can "save" you $20 on your Bigpond service.
Other changes include the removal of the pathetic 200MB and 400MB plans, the minimum plan now has 2GB of data included, Turbo for $39.95 per month unbundled or Elite $49.95 per month unbundled, but still charges at the exorbitant rate of $150/GB for excess usage. All the other plans are now part of Telstra's "Liberty" family which shape users to dial up speeds once your quota is used.
New plans inserted into the mix also include a 100GB and 200GB quota plan, very generous quota offerings from a company that in the past didn't offer very large usage caps.
The Turbo plans are still overpriced when compared to competitors in the market. Bigpond's Turbo Liberty 50GB is $99.95 where Internode charges only $49.95 for the same amount of data on the same speed.
The Elite plans however are very competitive when compared to the competitor Telstra Wholesale ADSL2+ offerings. This has caused many to speculate that Wholesale prices will need to be lowered in the near future with Telstra now having an unfair advantage in the market.
The Whirlpool forums were a buzz after the release this morning, many praising Telstra for finally lowering their prices but most, myself included, still commenting that they remain far too high compared to the rest of the world. It's a step forward but still more needs to be done in order to get Australia decent and fair pricing in line with the rest of the OECD top rated countries.
Look out for the ACCC enquiry which is sure to be launched in the coming weeks as the competitors do some number crunching and whether Telstra will indeed reduce wholesale pricing all by itself or is inevitably forced to by the regulator.
Read the media release here: Telstra Media Centre
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