Telstra’s Internet usage research uncovers the obvious

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 26 July 2010 17:20

Your IT - Home IT

Obvious, or rather, “obviously”, is a favourite word of our PM whenever she seems to speak about anything, and also obvious is the findings from Telstra’s research that many homes now have several “Internet enabled devices” at their disposal, all wanting to connect to the Internet.

 

Telstra has, at long last, dropped its prices to more realistic levels, as I discussed in my article yesterday, entitled: “Telstra drops Bigpond prices, but is it enough?!”. 

The headline price drop concerns both the 200GB download plan, previously set at a wallet-vapourising $179.95 per month, and now down to a much more palatable $89.95 per month, with the chance to lower than to only $69.95 per month if you have both a “full service” Telstra landline (with its high line rental costs) and either a BigPond wireless connection, a post-paid Telstra mobile phone or Foxtel by Telstra.

You also need to elect to have these plans on a “single bill” and be on a 24 month contract.

The second headline price drop concerns the 50GB plan, which didn’t quite vapourise your wallet at $109.95 per month, but certainly left it in shreds. The shredding is now much less severe at a price of $69.95 per month, which again you’d be able to drop by $20 per month if you qualify as discussed above.

The reason for Telstra’s price drops are said to be “timely in light of new Telstra research which showed internet access along with food and heating were the three things Australians would least like to spend a day without”, according to Telstra’s Executive Director of the Consumer Division, Ms Rebekah O’Flaherty.

But in all honesty, the price drops are long overdue, and I can only imagine Telstra cooked up a survey to coincide with these prices drops which were presumably long ago decided upon.

When I say “cooked up”, I don’t mean that the results are in any way incorrect. They just uncover the obvious: that the Internet is an essential part of our lives, we don’t want to live without it and plenty of us have more than one device capable of connecting to the Internet, sometimes on our own person, let alone in our homes.

Ms O’Flaherty says that: “Telstra realises customers’ needs are changing, which is why our new BigPond broadband plans deliver greater data allowances at lower prices, allowing household members to do more on the internet for less.”

But a big question is – why has it taken since November 2009 for these price drops to appear?

David Thodey, Telstra CEO, said during an investor briefing, that Telstra had “gone too far” on pricing in some market segments and needed to “come back”. I took this as an admission that Telstra is the "serial overcharger" I've long claimed them to be.

There were some immediate price drops at the time, very minor ones, which I covered in an article at the time.

It has been nearly 9 months since then, and presumably the only real reason why prices haven’t fallen sooner, as indicated by Thodey, is likely to due to the NBN negotiations Telstra has had to endure with the "we lost our way" Federal Government.

So, what were the findings of Telstra’s research, who did the research on Telstra’s behalf, and what else did Telstra have to say? Please read on to page two…