Telstra broadband pricing out in front of overseas peers.

Stuart Corner
Monday, 14 July 2008 06:47

Your IT - Home IT

Optus has released a report commissioned from Spectrum Value Partners claiming it shows that Telstra has the most expensive, or second most expensive, consumer DSL broadband pricing plans of incumbent telecommunications providers in eighteen OECD countries.

"Telstra ranked as the second most or most expensive provider, compared to its peers, at all usage levels greater than 500MB per month," Optus said.

When asked to comment, Telstra did not dispute the report's findings. Spokesman Jeremy Mitchell told iTWire: "We find it amusing Optus comes out one day and says Telstra has too many customers and then on another day whinges about Telstra's prices being too high. Optus are simply blaming customers for the choices they are making. The fact is half of all broadband users in Australia turn to BigPond to provide them with high-speed Internet. Optus should quit complaining and look at why customers are choosing BigPond, which we believe to be our value, reliability and the entertainment we provide."

Optus, however had a different explanation for Telstra's high prices. Optus director government and corporate affairs, Maha Krishnapillai, said: " Telstra's prices are so high because Telstra has enormous market power in broadband and uses it ruthlessly."

And he warned the government against allowing Telstra similar power over services on the proposed National Broadband Network. "It is clear from Telstra's public comments that it sees the new network as a way for it to regain a broadband monopoly and charge sky high prices."

Spectrum managing partner, Justin Jameson told iTWire that Spectrum had used the same methodology it employs in its quarterly studies of Australian broadband offerings undertaken in conjunction with The Internet Industry Association. He said the countries used in the study had been selected simply as "those within the OECD where the information was easiest to obtain. He added: "When Optus commissioned us to do this research we did not know how it was going to turn out. We knew Australia was expensive but we were surprised."
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