Time for an Aussie mobile data revolution?

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by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Friday, 25 July 2008

Page 1 of 3 ! The cost of mobile data in Australia is all over the place – some carriers sell it cheap, others sell it at sky high prices, and effectively the same data transfers but on different devices from the same companies can be charged at different rates. When will data pricing ever get realistic? Related stories UK Population 60 million, UK Mobile Phone Connections 70 million Yahoo!'s Zimbra spiffs up iPhone support Google goes to 'Android Market' in App Store challenge Microsoft IE8 Beta 2 released: the web browser for jerk-offs? Google Gears up Safari support What a crazy situation Australians find themselves to be in. Carriers with numerous data rates across different plans, high excess data charges, relatively low included data caps, having uploads counted towards using up your download limit and wildly varying prices across the telecommunications industry. Although 3 Mobile have arguably the cheapest mobile data rates, such as 1GB of data for AUD $15 per month with a mobile USB broadband device, this plan is not available on your mobile phone – 500MB of data costs AUD $20. They also only service capital cities and the Gold Coast - but not other major centres around Australia as do its competition. Telstra has very similar data charges when you get 3.5G HSDPA data from a wireless broadband modem or via your phone, so at least there’s parity there, but Telstra has the highest data charges around. Vodafone sells 5GB of data for AUD $39 per month, but this plan is only available for USB wireless modems, not for mobile phone data plans. Why not? It’s the same story for Optus, too, although their new AUD $129 per month plan gives “unlimited, timeless” voice and video calls to “standard” local and national landlines and mobiles for consumers (business users can’t take advantage of it) while also giving 2GB of data. But pay Optus $49 per month and you’ll get 6GB of data on a USB wireless modem. Excess data charges are also sky high, something the ACCC is aware of but can only warn telcos to properly warn consumers about. The prices are sky high especially when compared with excess data charges on wired plans, which are either non-existent due to shaping, or are simply much cheaper than 3.5G excess usage charges that can see each additional gigabyte downloaded over and above your cap cost hundreds of dollars. This isn’t right! Telcos obviously want data charges to make up for shortfalls in call charges, but why are we putting up with all of this? Sure, telcos have networks which must be maintained and upgraded. And there are limitations as to the number of people that can be connected to a cell tower on the network at the same time. Each new person that connects lowers the amount of data for everyone else. Vodafone’s 3.5G HSDPA plan of 5GB for $39 per month saw oversubscription happen, which meant users getting speeds of around 250Kbps instead of the 500Kbps to 1.5Mbps that a 3.5G HSDPA modem is capable of achieving. Continued on page 2. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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