It’s still a far cry from the unlimited plans being offered by AAPT, TPG and Exetel, but Optus has just boosted the data allowances in its home broadband plans, as well as ditching most of their excess usage fees.
Plans start at $40 a month for 30GB worth of data (10GB peak, 20GB off-peak) and scale up to $130 for 200GB (use anytime) plan. Both uploads and downloads are counted as part of your quota (unsurprisingly), and you’ll need to sign up for a 24 month contract.
But the real kicker is that you need to bundle your home phone with every plan on offer for $30 a month.Whatiris pointed out in comments that you don’t necessarily need to bundle your home phone – you can instead bundle your mobile. Which makes that $40 plan look a lot more like a $70 plan, which suddenly doesn’t sound quite as appealing.
On the upside, Optus are also offering Naked plans, starting at $60 for 120GB worth of data (with a $249 connection fee).
[Optus]
Tom O'Hare
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 3:21 PMyeah thats still rubbish, nice try optus but you still an asshole (I say this as I find these petty offerings insulting)
whatiris
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 3:25 PM“But the real kicker is that you need to bundle your home phone with every plan on offer for $30 a month.”
No you don’t: http://personal.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Template_woRHS&FP=/personal/bundles/broadbandmobile&site=personal
whatiris
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 3:25 PMAlso: http://personal.optus.com.au/web/ocaportal.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Template_woRHS&FP=/personal/internet/nakedbroadband&site=personal
Joe
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 3:54 PMProblem with exetel is the moment they find you unprofitable like you download 100Gig+ they will terminate your contract.
Rod
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:08 PMSo how are those last two plans “unlimited”, and yet the others not? They all get throttled eventually…
Tom
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:23 PMI don’t get the two unlimited ones. They state 100 and 200gb respectively, but then say unlimited broadband allowance, and top it off with speed throttling. I’m assuming the error is the unlimited broadband allowance but how could they let that simple thing slip through?
Gary Minato
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 7:31 PMDid you check out the prices on the home phone side of these deals? Unbelievable – 80 cents per minute PLUS 35 cents connection fee for National calls, 30 cents for local calls – and only 18 cents per minute to overseas.
Eugene
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 8:16 PM256k shaping on those “Unlimited” plans. That’s a usable speed.
Joey
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 11:10 PMRodd,
Because Optus thinks 256kbps(32KB/s) is broadband
Tony
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 1:38 AMneed an optus exchange one would assume??
Elmo
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:47 PMAnd I assume they will count uploads towards your quota as well. I think them mentioning “unlimited” should be classified as fraud. It is in no way unlimited if they throttle you.
Ian Exaudi
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 7:02 PMTo counter the usual provider bashing, I thought I would point out what some small businesses are using these sorts of plans for …
We do a lot of hosting by colocating and managing servers within larger datacentres. As such, one of the big-though-necessary expenses is an offsite and/or off-server backup that keeps data safe for our customers in case of failure or disaster.
One way to do that is to set up these sort of accounts in various locations (including staff/directors homes) and let them use the connectivity … then at midnight every night the servers spring into action and start uploading backups to inexpensive Network Attached Storage boxes in each location. Instant, inexpensive offsite backup.
Typically, an ADSL2+ connection getting full tilt at downloading (from a 100Mbps server) can back up nearly 10GB per hour. That’s pretty significant for an inexpensive solution.