iiNet cuts price of terabyte 100Mbps NBN plans

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news National broadband company iiNet has launched several new National Broadband Network plans, including a plan featuring 1000GB (one terabyte) of download quota and 100Mbps speeds for $99 per month — $10 a month cheaper than its previous terabyte, 100Mbps NBN offering.

On its company blog last week, iiNet noted that it had recently launched two new NBN plans.

The first plan features 200GB of monthly broadband data quota and comes with 25Mbps speeds. It includes iiNet’s Netphone Internet telephony service and all local and “standard” national calls, and costs $69.99 per month.

“This plan is a great choice for those who want their Internet to run fast, but don’t expect to be using a huge amount of quota. This is also an affordable nbn™ choice for people who still use their home phone regularly,” the company wrote.

The second plan costs $99.99 per month and comes with 100Mbps speeds, as well as 1000GB (one terabyte) of data quota. However, it doesn’t come with any included telephone calls.

“Our second recently added plan is for people who love their Internet, but may not be as interested in making phone calls … This is a great option if you want pure, fast internet with lots of quota and don’t mind paying as you go for local and standard national calls,” the ISP said.

Customers signing up for new iiNet plans will need to pay a $79.95 activation fee, unless they sign up for a two-year contract. They also receive a free Wi-Fi modem if they sign up for a two-year contract.

The news does not appear to change iiNet’s previous NBN plans, but instead gives customers more options. The company has previously offered several other terabyte NBN plans with 100Mbps speeds, for example, at $109.99 and $119.99 price points, with those plans offering local and “standard” national calls, plus “standard” Australian mobile calls respectively.

The new terabyte option appears to give iiNet customers an option of signing up for a cheaper broadband plan that does not place an emphasis on included telephone calls.

iiNet’s new plans also bring the company’s pricing structure closer to that of its parent, TPG.

TPG, for example, offers a 100Mbps NBN plan with unlimited data but without any bundled telephone calls for $99.99 per month — the same price as the new iiNet plan announced today.

iiNet has offered terabyte NBN plans for some time. The company first launched terabyte plans on the NBN back in August 2010. At the time, the company was strongly targeting early rollout NBN customers in regions such as Tasmania, offering them plans with 500GB on- and off-peak quota for only $99.95, as part of special arrangements at the time.

The company last revamped its NBN plans in November 2015.

opinion/analysis
It looks like two things are happening here.

Firstly, iiNet is recognising that many people don’t care at all about home telephone access, and use their mobile phone for pretty much all calls now. This is precisely my own situation … we technically do have a landline phone connected to our household, but we never use it — it’s only there so we can get TransACT VDSL. We use our mobiles for all calls.

Secondly, its parent TPG is gradually bringing iiNet’s product mix closer to its own. I do wonder how long it will be before they are identical.

Image credit: CeBIT Australia, Creative Commons

33 COMMENTS

  1. Why would you make all calls through scamming mobile ? That is a very sheepy attitude. What about free VOIP service ? I barely use the mobile and communicate solely through VOIP/IM/Video conferencing. We barely use the landline and it goes down when it pleases. If you rely on that crap for FTTN then it will also go down too.

    100mbps I am assuming is for FTTP ?

    It would be a scam to sell 100mbps plans to anything that relies on telephone lines. Anything that uses faulty copper telephone lines is ADSL. That barely stays up, and drops too many packets to even use 1TB. They are up to plans and a lucky dip.

    Even FTTB is a joke. HFC is also a lucky dip.

    These free wifi modems I am assuming are unmaintained, and insecure with barely any firewall features also.

    Don’t expect the same form Telstra or Optus especially Optus. Optus don’t even tell you what you get until after the fact. It’s a lucky dip and they add speed pack crap.

    As far as I’m concerned calling it an NBN ended when they stopped rolling out FTTP for ideology reasons. It’s faulty copper trash that people are already experiencing downtimes. Its ADSL and HFC and nothing but marketing scams now ,so the exact marketing scams trying to flog of faulty copper as they already do.

    • “Why would you make all calls through scamming mobile ” Because I get more ‘free’ calls than I will ever use with the data plan I want I might as well use them.

      • Those who offer free calls also offer freely dropped calls. Since optus started offering cheap unlimited call plans their voice network went to the dogs again. Might have to switch to telstra unless a decent VoLTE effort (not just for one or two “premium” phones) fixes things.

        Now my real question is about this node congestion thing. What is the aggregate capacity of an FTTN node, and is this constraint due to the uplink/backhaul or due to crosstalk? If this aggregate capacity problem is as bad as alleged, then NBN has made itself completely redundant.

    • I’m on FTTB and achieve >95/35 actual bandwidth the majority of the time. The modem syncs a fair bit higher. Copper however is internal to the building and less than 20 years old, which I expect helps a lot.
      Paying for the voice plan but only ever had it work once. I’ll have to try again as using a mobile to talk for any extended time is annoying. If I can’t get it working I’ll see if I can drop down to this plan and save $10/month.

  2. “I do wonder how long it will be before they are identical.”

    What currently is the difference?

    I am glad things seem to be shifting away from the ‘must bundle a phone’ in though.

  3. iiNet network should be integrated into the TPG network.
    No need to keep two duplicate networks running.
    Plus it’s not like iiNet/Internode has good routing anymore anyway, Malone got rid of Level3 transit after the Internode merger and replaced it with cheap ass Sprint transit.

    • iiNet is meant to be the “premium TPG”, so unless TPG increases the bandwidth on their network, iiNet would no longer be “premium”, thereby removing any reason to have iiNet actually exist…

          • Certainly does Renai!

            I have a 100/40 FTTN (Yes you read right, FTTN!) with them thats working all dandy ATM… but then again there aren’t many people on my node just yet…

            And yes, I get the full 100/40 300m from the node…. I count myself VERY lucky.

          • Similar prices. Difference, Annex M on ADSL2, Australian call centre, every time I have called support for GFs iiNet account I’ve got an overseas call center that seems so tightly packed with people it sounds like they are at a party.

  4. The second plan costs $99.99 per month and comes with 100Mbps speeds, as well as 100GB (one terabyte) of data quota. However, it doesn’t come with any included telephone calls.

    mistake here, 100GB (one terabyte). should be 1000GB

  5. Nit: ” as well as 100GB (one terabyte) of data quota.”

    itym 1000GB – and you should point out that that’s not an _actual_ terabyte :)

  6. TPG are the ones that suck by removing choice.

    Don’t offer 50/20 speed tiers and have a one size fits all approach to plans.

  7. Not much of a bargain, period!

    For when you consider the peak hour oversubscribed congestion time block from from 4 pm to after midnight when the line speed is reduced to a slow crawl, that makes ADSL1 look like a Ferrari.

    Sorry iinet, it’s just a complete waste of money until, the price drops to approximately to one half of the current bill, to compensate the end users daily inconvenience of an oversubscribed service..

    The better one for money value would be the slowest one in the iinet NBN speed pack, anything faster is a complete waste of money at this point in time.

    There is an old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

    • “The better one for money value would be the slowest one in the iinet NBN speed pack, anything faster is a complete waste of money at this point in time.”
      Sad but true. When we upgraded to 50/20Mb/s FW 5 months back it was fantastic but lately apart from the upload rate it’s little better than a basic 12/1 plan’s performance during evenings & weekends.
      http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5375537411 (7.30PM Friday)

  8. Renai your webpage broke the cardinal sin of allowing popup/popover advertising (free eBook from IDG Research Services). Apart from being obtrusive it breaks the flow of trying to read your article.

    I suggest you visit this site which details acceptable webpage advertising methods (which I have no problem with):
    https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads

    • He probably goes through a third party ad delivery service, such as Google Ads. He needs to report that business name to his service.

    • I’m sorry about this, but I have to make money or no Delimiter. The pop-up is easily closed and there is a cookie set so it won’t arrive again for quite some time.

      • No issues with you making money but unlike most of the pop-up ads that particular one doesn’t have a close option (on iPad at least).

        • I have no problem with Renai wanting to make money either but popup/over/under ads are the bane of the modern webpage. I get enough of that crap on shitty websites like CRN, ZDNET, and numerous other tech websites.

          Sadly if websites made ads as per the guidelines listed in AdBlock then they would pass their filter and we would see non-obtrusive ads and there would be more chance people might actually click on them if they were interested.

  9. Firstly, iiNet is recognising that many people don’t care at all about home telephone access, and use their mobile phone for pretty much all calls now. This is precisely my own situation … we technically do have a landline phone connected to our household, but we never use it — it’s only there so we can get TransACT VDSL. We use our mobiles for all calls.

    I have to agree Renai, I can’t even remember where my copper comes out of the wall anymore.

Comments are closed.