Price war brewing in Australian mobile broadband market

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 29 November 2007 10:29

Opinion and Analysis

So, what about Telstra? Telstra’s pricing for 3GB of data is $184.95 with BigPond Wireless and $119.95 for the Telstra branded Next G solutions or Telstra Mobile customers accessing 3.5G broadband through their mobile phones. That is clearly much more expensive than Vodafone’s 5GB service.

But only Telstra's nationwide Next G network that covers 98% of the population which Telstra says is “100 times larger than any other 3G network”, offering rural and regional customers the same kind of coverage and speeds on offer to metropolitan users. If you need that kind of coverage, there really is no other choice. But if you mainly spend your time in metropolitan areas that's not so important.

Telstra’s other ace is a network that is ‘up to’ 7.2Mbps capable, not the now older ‘up to’ 3.6Mbps that competitors have installed and are promising to upgrade to 7.2Mbps in the not too distant future. That means speeds of 500Kbps to 3Mbps and even faster at burst speeds for downloads, and speeds of up to 1.3Mbps for uploads, eclipsing the 384kbps upload speed limit of 3.6Mbps 3.5G networks. This faster upload speed is called HSUPA, high speed uplink packet access, and is the other half of the HSPA promise - fast downloads AND fast uploads.

Upload speeds are important if you plan to use high quality video conferencing with services such as Skype. They are also important if you want remote wireless access to computers connected to a modem capable of up to 1.3Mbps uploads, or want to allow others to remotely connect to your computer for technical support.

For anyone that regularly travels across Australia and needs broadband access to the Internet, only Telstra’s network offers the broadest and fastest coverage, with the appropriate equipment and additional antennas in regional areas. In city areas, it is much faster than other wireless solutions - but at a price.

But now everyone’s prices now look very expensive compared with Vodafone’s offering. It will be very interesting to see how popular Vodafone’s offer is, and to see if other telcos follow suit with generous plans of their own.

We checked if uploads are counted towards the download limit, and as with other providers, this is still the case.

We also asked Vodafone if they’d continue offering a 5GB plan in 2008 at this price point, given the fact their press release states the 5GB offer runs from the 3rd of December to the 31st of December 2007 only.

Tim Cowan, the aforementioned Data Marketing Manager at Vodafone Australia responded that: "Vodafone expects its new 5GB for $39 data plan to prove particularly popular with customers in the run up to Christmas and into the new year. Vodafone will always seek to ensure it remains as competitive as possible and may revise pricing in response to market demands. However, being a highly competitive environment, Vodafone will be keeping its cards close to its chest."

Cowan seems to suggest the plan will remain popular ‘into the new year’, while remaining ambiguous sounding, but it’s clear that the era of 5GB at an affordable price is here at last, something I remember asking about at previous Vodafone launches when 1GB was seen as a large download limit.

Let the mobile broadband price wars enter a new phase of affordability and capacity, with consumers the ultimate winners.