news National broadband company iiNet has launched a new range of naked DSL broadband plans — simplifying its plan structure by offering customers a single download quota of one terabyte for the cost of $69.99 per month — as well as revamping its VDSL plan structure on TransACT’s FTTN network in Canberra.
The base version of the new plans costs $69.99 per month and comes with an Internet telephone connection (Voice over IP), but no standard calls. For an extra $10 per month the company will include “local and standard national calls”, while for a further $10 per month the company will also include “standard Australian mobile calls”.
If customers sign up for a two-year contracts they will have to pay a $79.95 activation fee to get on the plan, while those who don’t sign up for a contract will pay a $99.95 activation fee. Customers who sign up for a plan will get a free Wi-Fi broadband modem included (with a $10 delivery fee), while customers not on a plan will need to bring their own modem or pay $89 for the same Wi-Fi broadband modem.
The company has also launched new VDSL plans on the Fibre to the Node network owned by iiNet subsidiary TransACT in Canberra.
The company’s new VDSL plans also start at $69.99 per month, for a plan that comes with a terabyte of data quota. That cost includes the company’s Internet telephony service and local and ‘standard’ national calls. As with the company’s new naked DSL plans, the new VDSL plans can be upgraded.
The company’s entry-level VDSL plan is artificially capped at speeds of 30Mbps down and 5Mbps up, but if you pay an extra $10 per month you get the full speeds of up to 80Mbps.
Note that higher speeds may be possible. The writer of this article has a TransACT FTTN VDSL broadband connection, and regularly exceeds 90Mbps.
If you pay an extra $10 beyond that, for a total of $89.99 per month, you can also have ‘standard’ Australian mobile calls included.
However, some customers may baulk at the pricey installation fee. If you sign up to iiNet’s new plans on a two year contract, you’ll pay a $59.99 activation fee. But sign up without a contract, and you’ll pay much more — $159.99.
In general, the plan structure delivered by iiNet today appears to somewhat mimic the broadband plans of iiNet’s parent company TPG, which recent acquired iiNet.
TPG currently offers, for example, a naked DSL plan for $69.99 which includes unlimited data quota. There is not a huge practical difference between a one terabyte data quota plan and an unlimited quota plan if customers are using ADSL, due to the slow speed of ADSL networks meaning that they will typically not be able to download much more than 1TB per month in any case.
opinion/analysis
My opinion is that these currently look like pretty decent broadband plans from iiNet, and certainly better value for those on TransACT’s VDSL network in Canberra. I am currently paying a significant amount more for significantly less than I would get under iiNet’s new VDSL plan structure. I plan to switch to the new plan structure ASAP.
Do these new plans quietly announced by iiNet this week on its blog represent the first step in harmonising its product set with that of TPG? I’m not sure, but I would not be surprised. I’ll be watching closely to see what the company does next in terms of its product set.
Image credit: CeBIT Australia, Creative Commons
Just playing around in the iinet Toolbox with the new plans, and it seems they don’t include any Freezone (I get Netflix quota-free on iinet at the moment).
But at a terabyte a month that probably doesn’t make a lot of difference to most people.
The new plans don’t include Freezone
Which is basically the TPG unlimited plan. But not called unlimited because that would seem we’re trying to price things the same as the prime brand
> Do these new plans quietly announced by iiNet this week on its blog represent the first step in harmonising its product set with that of TPG?
They did this with Internode. Its trick meant to confuse customers and have them signup for TPG
That would suck, if it were true… I just left TPG to sign up with iiNet. I’m on the $69.99 Naked DSL plan, and I am thoroughly enjoying the lack of a slowdown in peak hours :)
It is highly unlikely that will last into the medium term. I’ve been hearing from partners and people within iiNet that everything is on hold pending reviews. iiNet had a few projects on the go internally that were due to be rolled into commercial products that have been put on ice until the TPG have reviewed them. Frankly I’d be surprised if they saw the light of day at this point.
Could be a preemptive because it the over build from NBN.
Terrible shame TPG is phasing out value adds such as Freezone. While 1TB of quota should be more than sufficient for most needs, Freezone still provided free access to some premium quality radio streams and also provided an easy portal of radio station and video stream lists. I use it daily and have done so since the concept first arose with Internode 15 years ago. I have been a happy customer of Internode (and recently iiNet) for 15 years due to services such as this. I fear that this is indicative of a move by TPG to absorb the premium brands and shut them down including all the other little value adds that long term customers such as myself came to appreciate, even network reliability (I had never experienced congestion until TPG took over). I was always happy to pay more as a result. Now TPG is reducing these once fine brands to yet another commoditised “best effort” and over-subscribed pipe. It’s a terrible shame and almost all long term customers wish that TPG had never taken over.
I agree Ian. I don’t use the Freezone much but I fear that iiNet will soon be just a name. In practice it will become a bottom line ISP like TPG. I’ve been with iiNet since the mid 90’s and for the first time in my life I don’t feel any loyalty for them as all the people who built the company have left, especially Michael Malone, who I greatly admired.
I give the brands two years before they’re all shut down to be replaced with some marketing driven exciting new brand name that combines them all and will make everything better. Acquisition and wind down is a great way to deal with competition.
I will miss the sharp edged advocacy and innovation from iiNet and Internode.
Same here… 15 years or more while happy to pay more for quality, and no longer feel any loyalty.
I only stayed for the VDSL network, which I’ll jump from when the NBN eventually comes through, as TPG style congestion slowly eats in to the network… There’s some well regarded ISP’s starting up on the NBN now.
iinet now also charge freight for hardware they don’t even ship
They’re also offshoring all our data to corrupt countries too. Even more fuel for identity theft and targetted scams, ransomware etc as we see ever more of our private data leaked from poorly governed countries with no recourse. I also understand that TPG’s intention is to align and then eventually shut down all the other brands therefore realising a strategy to eliminate competition by acquisition. iiNet and Internode will be ‘grandfathered’ with only TPG plans on offer eventually, and all value-adds like Freezone, reliable network infrastructure, local *non script-driven* support, technical features etc all excluded from new plans and ultimately TPG (after the other brands have been shut down) – leaving only a cheap, insecure, private data leaking, commoditised and often congested pipe (which TPG is famous for). However I am hopeful another ISP will take their place on the NBN eventually. E.g. I hear Skymesh is pretty good and may not offshore our private data to corrupt countries and have local non-script driven support. I’d happily pay more for that!
Id love to see some evidence for this irrational rant
I used to work for a reseller of TPG. Here is an example of something that crossed my desk. Potential client submitted an application for TPG internet in lets say, April. TPG replied that no ports were available and they’d be unable to process the client’s application. Many months later, lets say September, I get a contact from the potential-client. They are angry. After TPG had rejected them they’d gotten internet with a competitor. Several months of happy internet followed. Then TPG churned them without warning. This caused all kinds of cancellation fees with the existing ISP, and loss of internet for the client (because obviously they have no TPG internet details). TPG told them that they were now a client (based off the old rejected paperwork) and that they couldn’t leave without paying a cancellation fee, plus they’d need to repay the telstra provisioning fee because TPG wouldn’t cover it.
I saw this kind of stuff everyday, plus all the CC email notifications about customers ‘piracy’, which gave me the customer’s name and what they were accused of having watched.
TPG’s offshoring is well documented.
If you put that all together, yeh, those of us who’ve been ‘within the beast’ have no problems seeing a future where TPG is a detrimental corporation to the privacy and consumer needs of Australian internet users.
TBH as someone who’s worked in the Telco/ISP industry on and off since 2010 I’m not surprised at all. imo Telstra (despite past history) is a far far more ethical organisation than TPG will ever be.
It’s a bit sad when the 800lb monopolist is more ethical than the other organisations organisations it competes with (Optus excluded, it’s generally an ethical organisation to deal with too).
TIO complaint would solve that in no time and slap a fairly hefty fine on TPG if they acted as you say.
FWIW, the Naked DSL 1TB plan changes happened back on September 17th (2 months ago!).
… it was the same day the Adam Internet brand was ‘turned off’, redirecting new customers to iiNet.
Interesting. They certainly didn’t announce it at the time.
Yeah there was a thread on the Internode whirlpool section about it as people were saying why only iiNet and not us. I think the 1TB thing was develop specifically for netflix being added back into the quota rotations (so they can better managed contention).
I don’t know if all those ‘hidden’ costs of signups and activations are the same be interesting to see if that’s the ‘changes’ and hence quite announcements.
Because the internode brand will be turned off in 2 years time.
If the internode logo disappears from 150 Grenfell st. Thats trouble or simon hackett bought it for his garage
Yes I saw the iiNet Naked upgrades a bit ago. The buses around Sydney have been bearing the advertising for a few weeks.
It appears that there are similar un-announced upgrades to Internode Naked plans for existing customers today though the public website has no change showing…….. yet.
OK… that was yesterday.
It looks like Internode are rolling out upgrades today for non-Naked (wet ADSL?) Broadband plans on their own infrastructure. Again un-announced.
That’s a pretty good deal, I’m paying Telstra $103 per month for ADSL w/ 1TB Data, Static IP and PSTN phone line (which has no phone plugged in).
I changed to this a couple of weeks ago from the previous $69.95 iiNet Naked plan.
Even with the loss of the freezone/Netflix it’s still worked out as an extra 3-400GB a month for me. With frequent PS4 game updates coming in at 20-30 GBs each and a raft of recent software updates that have required multiple 10-15GB patches (music production software now regards 80GB downloads as being regular events) my old 300GB quota wasn’t lasting a full month without a lot of management.
Also even being an old Naked DSL (no contract) customer I didn’t get slugged with the setup costs.
Overall a plus – though bizarrely they charged me 6c extra instead of 4 as would be the actual difference. iiNet’s accounts area do weird things.
Isn’t it weird how we keep needing faster, bigger pipes as time goes by.
Pity there isn’t a government plan to effectively deal with this…
“Isn’t it weird how we keep needing faster, bigger pipes as time goes by.
Pity there isn’t a government plan to effectively deal with this…”
Obviously you’re not a standard case study though, clearly you’re some kind of tech-head weirdo who does all sorts of hacking and stuff on the intarwebs.
Either that, or you’re just watching too much TV and adult video to count as a real internet user…. or… you’re just downloading pirated TV shows… or… you’re just a criminal looking to take down the government… or whatever other excuse the Liberals want to use to explain why people don’t need more than 25Mbit.
Well actually, if population control was a driver then the government, illuminati, whatever would want faster better consumer Internet, as entertained masses are compliant masses. Reading and conversing (the genesis of any revolution) requires relatively little, if any bandwidth.
I want my 1GB symmetric fibre internet! It will be my soma. In return I will obey all of the thought police and love Big Brother.
Right on brother..
I changed to this over a month ago. Although I miss the freezone I have months of downloads waiting which I can finally do now. I used to regularly hit my 300 gig quota (but could thankfully watch netflix on freezone) and the most I ever got using freezone for steam downloads + netflix was to double it (600 gig). Now for the past two months I have nearly used all my 1000 GB and I plan to do it again next month (just yesterday I downloaded like 150 gig of digital playstation games I had been waiting to get and chipping away at for months).
I wonder if this is going to make congestion a lot worse because I know I’m certainly using the internet a lot differently now.
I wish my old grandfathered $59.95 100G naked plan would get some extra data about now
its a price point that no longer exists
Surely, unless you’re entirely strapped for cash, paying $10 more a month to get 10x the data cap is worth it… no?
Worth it , it may be if my speed would allow me to use a decent percentage of it..
In my case , to me no,its not really worth it for the $10 extra I’d rather a real phone line and the possible telstra care factor(support), iinet offers that on year contract for the 69.95 .
my experience on naked in this location has been terrible, and the price they get ULL and data for they could easily have cheap plans still
FFS – just make it all you can eat.
(The writer of this article has a TransACT FTTN VDSL broadband connection, and regularly exceeds 90Mbps.)
Renai how far from the node are you????
My understanding is that the TransACT VDSL2 network is actually FTTC as they aimed for an average line distance of 300m to the node. Iirc they did this to run AT&T style paytv over the network too.
Regardless of type, except FTTH there has to be a node somewhere if there is copper at the end of the connection.
its also my understanding its using a better grade of copper than the NBN fttn product will use. if you were interested in the performance to give indication of NBN abilities, i suspect you will find the two are not really directly comparable.
No idea, but I can tell you I don’t want to move house :)
I have been talking to a lot of people up in Bundaberg (QLD) FTTN will be switched on, on the 4th December 2015 and they all know the speed of the connection depends on the distance from the node but they cant find a reliable source (that is a mature FTTN area) to compare with, they don’t trust the MTM trials. It would be nice if people that have mature FTTN connections could post some speed results and their distance from the node.
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