BigPond cable accelerates to 30Mbps

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 September 2007 17:15

Your IT - Home IT

Telstra BigPond has launched its 30Mbps cable broadband service, BigPond Cable Extreme, in Sydney and Melbourne.

The service, with upload speeds up to 1Mbps, is available to more than 1.8 million Sydney and Melbourne homes and businesses. User on other parts of Telstra's HFC network can get speeds up to 17Mbps downstream, 256kbps upstream.

Customers in the 30Mbps service area that have already opted for the existing 17Mbps service can get the new service at no additional charge. If they have a compatible modem it will connect at the new higher speed if it is turned off and back on again. The new service are charged a $10 per month premium over existing 8Mbps cable services with the same monthly download limit.

A 200Mbyte monthly limit plan costs $39.95 per month; other options are:400Mbytes $49.95; 25Gbyte $99.95; 60Gbyte, $129.95. Data in excess of the download cap is charged at $0.15 per Megabyte. There is also a "Liberty plan" which offers 12Gbyte for $69.95 with throttling to 64kbps of excess traffic.

However Telstra offers access to a number of sites exclusive of metering.