The telecommunications landscape in Australia has changed very rapidly over the past few months and for the better. Consumers have never had better value when it comes to selecting their Internet Service Provider (ISP) as the ISP's battle for customer numbers. More recently, Bigpond under the leadership of new CEO David Thodey appears to have been listening to consumers and released some very good pricing on their ADSL2+ plans.
This began a price and data war with iiNet firing the first shot early last week, releasing a whopping 1TB data plan on it's own ADSL2+ (Chime) network and extending the offer to Telstra Wholesale exchanges, for those of us in regional areas, with speeds of up to 8000/384k. The 1TB plan will cost you $99.95 per month bundled or unbundled, but of course, the plans come with a few caveats. Firstly iiNet has started counting uploads as well as downloads towards the monthly total and the 1TB is broken into peak and off-peak of 500GB respectively. You are also required to bundle your home phone in order to get the 1TB plan, the same plan unbundled offers 400GB, split into peak and off-peak of 200GB each.
One would comment however that even with uploads counted, the generously large data limits would be enough for most of households with multiple internet enabled devices. Even without bundling, 400GB of quota is still a significantly large amount and many average users wouldn't even come close to hitting those limits.
Just a day after iiNet announced its 1TB line up, iPrimus came out swinging and 1-upped iiNet by releasing a 1.1TB plan. iPrimus's plan is only available on its own ADSL2+ network (Primus and Optus DSLAM's) and offers 1,111GB of usage (511 peak, 600 off-peak) for $99.95 per month on a 24 month plan. The plan is also available as a Naked DSL service for $10 more per month.
Not to be outdone, TPG then came out all guns blazing and announced its own 1TB plan, only available in limited TPG coverage areas but for an incredible $69.99 per month. TPG is well known for offering cut price ADSL2+ plans with large download limits, however many have complained that this has an adverse effect on network quality and performance. Many disgruntled users in the Whirlpool forums have voiced their concern at the slow speeds during peak periods and many question whether it is indeed worth it just to save a few dollars.
The focus now shifts to other major players like Internode and Exetel who have both signalled upcoming changes. Internode only just recently revised pricing on its own ADSL2+ (Agile) network, but in contrast to the plans released by iiNet and iPrimus, they've been blown out of the water. Exetel has also signalled that it is currently in talks with Telstra for ADSL2+ access, with preliminary pricing revealed, they too may have to go back to the drawing board and assess the recent changes.
What is clear however is that the ISP's are becoming more aggressive at chasing the consumer dollar. With the broadband market now saturated, ISP's are finding it harder to gain new customers with many consumers finding it too difficult to switch ISP's, or happy with their current provider. With more and more households using more bandwidth these current changes are a welcome sight and gone are the days of low quotas and excess fees.
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