The nation’s biggest telco Telstra has fired a new shot across the bow of its broadband rivals, allocating customers more value from existing bundled plans by doubling or more than doubling the amount of data quota they can use.
In a statement released today, the telco noted all of its home bundles had had their data quotas boosted; Its entry level 2GB plan has been boosted to 5GB, its 25GB plan has gone to 100GB, its 100GB plan has gone to 200GB, and its 200GB plan has been boosted to 500GB. The plans come with a Telstra telephone service included, as well as the company’s T-Box set-top box.
The complete details of the plans are available online at Telstra’s web site. They range from $89 to $159 in price per month, on a 24 month contract with a $35 upfront fee.
The company’s consumer executive director, Rebekah O’Flaherty, said the increase was the second for Telstra in a year (the company last bolstered its bundled quotas 12 months ago) and demonstrated how Australians’ use of the internet kept on growing.
“Telstra research last year found that the average Australian home had four net-connected devices. But in the past year, half of those homes have added at least one more,” O’Flaherty said. “We’ve seen an increase in activities such as movie downloads and video streaming via T-Boxes and internet connected TVs, particularly among younger families, on top of more traditional activities such as accessing news, weather and social networking.
“Telstra’s new bundles reflect what our customers tell us they want, as everyone from my grandmother to my daughter finds more and more ways to use the internet.”
Telstra customers who have a 13-digit account number are able to upgrade to the new bundle for free. It remains unclear, however, how the process will work for those with one of the old style of account numbers, however — believed to be a very small percentage of customers still on Telstra’s legacy billing platform. A Telstra spokesperson is clarifying the situation with respect to those cases.
The news still, however, leaves Telstra without a plan featuring a terabyte of included quota, despite the fact that most of Australia’s large ISPs launched such plans in late 2010. A number of other providers also offer ‘unlimited’ quota plans. Telstra’s plans are formally unlimited, as users will have their speed capped rather than pay for excess quota usage, but a number of other providers don’t feature the same speed cap when it comes to unlimited plans.
Image credit: Telstra
Cool – now update out 3G data too !!!
Am I reading that correctly? The lowest plan is for 5 gig, and that starts at 89.95. Pass, no thankyou.
yup, pass. Parents currently have the 12 GB -now grandfathered – Liberty plan at $69 p/m. going down to 5gb is a no fly proposition even if it were cheaper and the 3digit quota plans are a pretty hefty jump up in p/m fees. there isnt any real way i could recommend these plans, at all. if they feel like changing plan anytime soon they definitely will be changing provider as well. Telstra: Fail.
oh and Robbie, HC was snarking…. you might want to check your sarcasm filter :)
probably internode supporters the comments above
Hey dumbarse, I think you’ll find a liberty plan is from your beloved monstrosity.
wouldnt have gone with the name calling but it is indeed a Telstra plan. and i wouldnt even have to be a node supporter; just about any of the other options on the market today, bundled, would be more attractive on a basic dollar basis. theres plenty i *wouldnt* buy from but its worth remembering optus have a 50+70 GB bundle for $5 less than the grandfathered plan, and iinet have a 100+100 bundle at 10 dollars more.
if one were an internode fanboy, which Sydney decidedly is not you could have a 150GB anytime use plan plus phone at the same price as the iinet on/offpeak use plan, or get a 30GB bundle at 59.90.
upshot still is i think Telstra needed to have thought through their plans a little more. as they are now, they just dont hit the mark for me, and i certainly doubt if a Telstra rep called up trying to get the parents to change their plan they would have a sale – the value aint there.
The plan costs that much because it comes with a bundled phone line and a bundled T-Box. I’m planning to do a bit of a comparison article to highlight some of the differences between the carriers at the moment.
I dont understand why anyone would need more than 2gb of data a month. Telstra must be marketing these new plans to filthy pirates.
HC i gather you dont play games? dl patchs for games? open up email? look at you tube (150meg at least for a lot of videos watched on there) update drivers ? just plain dl anything i gather??
Im over 2 gig when i turn me pc on in the morn…. you know we use computers these days not stings with little round things on them to use to count
Relax. Is joke. I just get sick of all the twits that say anyone that wants faster speeds or higher quotas must be a pirate. These people are usually with Telstra too I’m guessing.
btw I dont play games but I actually am on a 1tb plan and haven’t managed to max it out but have come close on a few occasions, I like not having to worry abut going over the limit and this plan is like an unlimited plan for me.
As you might imagine, I’m a heavy Internet user, and we breached our 100GB iiNet plan this month … I probably should have been doing more during the off-peak time, but I just don’t have time to think about that atm. So now we’re on a 200GB plan ;)
(I do watch a lot of HQ StarCraft II matches online ;))
You’re out of touch, HC.
Wow cool wait til they start censoring the internet too.
For those boggling at the prices bear in mind that these are bundled plans, i.e. they include the home phone line rental, and get another $10 off if you also have foxtel or telstra mobile.
so is the grandfathered Liberty plan i mention upthread. telstra plan vs telstra plan, bundled vs bundled. i am including the fact you can get 11 bucks off those plans if you ditch the Tbox as well but its still 20 bucks p/m more to go to the 200 GB plan, and 10 more again for the 100GB plan. if Telstra had a bundle between the 5GB and the 100/200 gb options they might have a bit more appeal for those on grandfathered plans. just sayin.
I pretty much agree with this — I think a lot of ppl will look at the 100GB plans and think “I don’t need that much quota”.
Too bad if you are not able to get a wired service from Telstra, as you will remain stuck on 12Gb max and have NO bundle options.
GW
Yep, welcome to my world. It’s amazing the number of things you can’t do on the internet when your quota is this low, to say nothing of the high latency and unreliable connection.
Urgh … yes I would *not* like to be purely on a wireless broadband package at this point.
Thanks Telstra. Now I don’t feel so bad for only being able to get cable.
A small percentage of people on the old style account…..what a load of rubbish….I have been trying to get one of my two phone numbers off of their old system and over to the new system (to join my other phone number that was set up at the same time 11 years ago) and six months down the track they still can’t do it. I couldn’t get any of the bundles as noone could work out how to do it……It took nearly 45 minutes for them to even get me a final balance on the account so that I could pay it out and move over to Optus’s bundle with unlimited phone calls (even mobile) and 500gb data. Gives me another 475Gb to play with a month and about an extra $100. Will be a long time till I bother with Telstra again.
*hugs my BigPond Ultimate Cable 100mb/s and 500GB of quota*
Those people talking about how other ISP’s have much better deals at lower prices are ignoring the fact that most people can’t access those plans. Anyone on a Telstra only DSLAM or a RIM can’t get cheap Internode or cheap iiNet or cheap TPG high quota plans. It costs us an average of $130 per month for phone rental, phone calls and 50Gb peak/50Gb off peak of quota from iiNet for example and none of the major ISP’s have anything that’s significantly better value. I could save $30 a month and not have to put up with off peak. These new Telstra plans aren’t bad value for most people.
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