Pay-as-you-go wireless broadband could be a pricey proposition

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 08 February 2007 08:17

Opinion and Analysis

Personal Broadband Australia (better known as iBurst to most travellers) has paired up with gotalk to launch a prepaid wireless broadband service. Not being slugged with a high monthly access fee is an attractive thought, but the rates being charged will give some business travellers pause for thought.

iBurst is sold by a variety of wholesalers, so prices vary, but a monthly charge of $30 for a 200MB download limit is fairly typical at the low end. Under the gotalk plan, customers will instead pay 14 cents per MB.

That equates to $28 for 200MB, which might seem like a relatively competitive deal. (Users also have to buy a specialised iBurst modem, but gotalk is selling those at similar prices to other resellers: $199 for a PCMCIA or USB model.)

However, higher-volume users will quickly discover that a monthly plan may be cheaper. For instance, a 10GB iBurst monthly access plan can readily be had for around $200 a month. The same volume of data on a pay-as-you-go plan would cost a whopping $1400.

And all those costs are before you notice in the fine print that there's a $0.39 cents a day access charge for the network, which amounts to almost $12 a month. That makes even the low-end plan cheaper than the post-paid equivalent.

To be fair, such plans are much more likely to appeal to users who want the occasional option of using broadband on the road, rather than dedicated travel addicts like Transit (or people who want wireless broadband in the home as a means of ditching their landline). Nonetheless, we can't help thinking that there's plenty of room for a better-value pay-as-you-go option.