TAG | BigPond makes shaped wireless broadband the new standard? |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Tuesday, 21 October 2008 | |
  
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That’s a feature that more wireless broadband users could use, choosing to pay for an extra gigabyte (or more) if the end of the broadband cap has come before the end of the month or your monthly cycle, but at least shaping your service guarantees you won’t pay ridiculously large excess usage fees. Of course BigPond has only given the benefit to half its users, either on the 5GB at $89.95 plan, or the 10GB for $129.95 plan, with the 200MB for $29.95 and 1GB for $59.95 users missing out, charged $0.25c per MB for every megabyte over the limit, something that could get quite expensive. There’s also no official or unofficial word as yet whether Telstra Business Next G modem users will also receive the same benefit, so far the shaped service only applies to consumer BigPond Next G modem plans. Telstra offers all of its BigPond Wireless plans to a 12 month contract rather than a 24 month contract but charges $299 for one of its Next G modems. As it has had for some time, Telstra also has a 36 month deal BigPond Wireless deal that gives the first 12 months at “half price”, with the following two years at the full price (but presumably changeable to “new monthly pricing” that comes out in the future) and a $299 rebate on your modem, but only if you have an existing Telstra service of some kind (phone, wired broadband or home phone). Although Vodafone, Optus and Three don’t offer a shaped service, Optus lets Virgin Mobile and iPrimus resell its service, and lets them offer a shaped service, so Optus is already allowing this on its network, even if it doesn’t officially offer shaping itself. The question now is how soon will Vodafone, Three and even Optus itself be forced to compete and offer the same shaping benefit, saving users from excess usage fees and depriving carriers of a lucrative revenue stream? And how soon will it be before Vodafone, Three Mobile and Optus offer at least 10GB plans of their own, or even a 12GB plan as iPrimus offered during September? If it doesn’t happen in the next couple of months, it’s sure to happen in 2009. 2008 was the year of mobile broadband, but 2009 is looking faster and even more competitive. For users of mobile broadband this is fantastic news! |
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