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Technology news and Jobs 
Fuzzy Logic Telstra’s $0 laptop with mobile broadband: ho-hum or yee-hah?
Fuzzy Logic Telstra’s $0 laptop with mobile broadband: ho-hum or yee-hah? | Telstra’s $0 laptop with mobile broadband: ho-hum or yee-hah? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 21 May 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 Aston says the reason behind the offer is simple: "Building on the success of the $0 upfront mobile phone offers that really took off in the 90s, we've decided the time is right to extend the same deal to mobile broadband.” Aston says the $0 upfront offer is very attractive to smaller business owners, who sometimes struggled with cash flow, explaining: “This package gives our customers access to the latest hardware and mobile broadband technology on Telstra's Next G network, Australia's largest and fastest national wireless broadband network, for a monthly cost of $99 for 36 months.” "This provides cost certainty and eliminates the stress of having to come up with a large upfront payment. Telstra is best able to meet these needs of small business through the extensive breath and depth of coverage and speed that the Next G network provides”, concluded Aston. So, there you have it. Telstra is “making it easier for you” business owners yet again, from the, ah... goodness of the bottom of their hearts – while wanting to promote Next G and sign up small business owners to a 3 year contract. It is a pity that this deal doesn’t include 2GB of download per month in year two, and 3GB of download per month in year three simply to recognise the fact that data usage is going irreversibly through the roof, which would show that Telstra really does care about you and your business, and doesn’t just care about 25c per megabyte excess usage charges. 3 years is a long time. Unless Telstra continues planning on selling 1GB of data for $89 per month in 2010, prices will fall, and over the long term, this deal will become ever less attractive. But that’s the case with all of these Flexirent type deals. If you haven’t got the upfront cash, you pay a financial penalty for using someone else’s money. Based on what it would cost to Flexirent a suitable laptop and get 1GB of Next G separately today, both on a 3 year contract, you will save more than $500 doing it Telstra’s $0 way. In addition, you can upgrade to a $148 per month plan for 3GB of download per month and the $0 upfront laptop. This requires a whole new set of calculations to see how affordable it is compared with getting your own 3GB Next G plan and your own laptop purchased outright or flexirented. So... if this a $0 upfront deal appeals to you, and you want Next G, and can live within the 1GB monthly limit (because you have wired broadband at home or in the office, saving the wireless broadband for when you’re out and about), it’s definitely a good deal. Whether you want or need Next G will be the question you’ll probably be asking yourself, in which case you can definitely get a much cheaper deal – with many more gigabytes for the money – through Vodafone, Optus or Three. These competitors and alternate options (including just paying for a laptop outright instead of flexirenting) making the value of Telstra's $0 upfront deal much more questionable.
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