Telstra finally drops BigPond prices – but is it enough?!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 25 July 2010 18:52

Your IT - Home IT

Telstra, Australia’s dominant telecommunications company and admitted serial overcharger has finally brought to life CEO David Thodey’s promise of months ago to lower prices with pricing that’s closer to competitors, with more generous download limits in some cases – but as you’d expect from Telstra, bundling “conditions” are still in place to access its very lowest prices.

Launched a couple of hours before the Federal Election 2010 leaders debate, the news that Telstra has lowered its BigPond pricing from tomorrow, the 26th of June, will probably get drowned out by the fervent election coverage to some degree.

The benefits of its new BigPond broadband plans include “reduced monthly access fees of $10 to $90 per month”, the upgrading of most people stuck on up-to 1.5Mbps “Turbo” plans to the faster 8 to 20Mbps “Elite” plans at “no extra cost” (except for the entry level 2GB Turbo plan), a reduction of 12 plans down to just four and “no additional usage fees on any plan” – although uploads are still counted towards the download limit and the shaped speed is still a very, very poor 64Kbps.

Still, Telstra is promising lower monthly bills for BigPond customers, something that’s always a good thing, but is Telstra’s message on when existing customers will see the discount applied seems potentially open to confusion by some consumers?

Telstra’s press release states that “existing customers will get the benefits of the new plans when they are moved to them over the coming months or customers can change their plans online via http://www.bigpond.com/broadband or by calling 13 2200.”

Meanwhile, at http://go.bigpong.com/broadband, you can read that “Existing customers on the BigPond Turbo Liberty (2GB), BigPond Elite Liberty (2GB), BigPond Elite Liberty (100GB) and BigPond Elite Liberty (200GB) plans will automatically receive the new pricing available to new customers from 25 July, 2010.”

If you’re not already on one of the four plans that survived, it looks like existing customers can change their plans manually by visiting the website or calling that 13 2200 number, but existing customers who do neither be automatically upgraded to the better plans and cheaper pricing “over the coming months” which presumably means some customers will keep paying the older prices until that happens.

As always, you as the consumer need to take responsibility and action on your own behalf. If you’re on the “wrong” old plan, you’d better make sure you upgrade yourself to one of the new plans right away so you either pay less or get more download for the money, or wait until Telstra does it for you “in the coming months”.

Tech-savvy Australians in general who love to discuss Internet service providers and the oft-vexing issue of Telstra on sites such as Whirlpool will also notice the price drops, and no doubt much fevered discussion will follow over whether Telstra has set prices to the right level or whether they should have gone much further. 

Although competitors will rightly say they still offer better pricing than Telstra, despite the new price drops, Telstra will probably claim it has a better network and it could point out that better pricing is better than no price drop at all.

More commentary on page two, the actual new prices themselves on page three, please read on!