Where once the gap in pricing and value between Telstra and pretty much every single other ISP in the country was massive, those distinctions appear to be fading away.
This week’s announcement from Telstra that it was doubling the data allowances on all its Complete Home Bundle packages sounds quite generous on the surface, and is certainly indicative of Telstra’s realisation that much of the rest of the market was leaving it behind in terms of value.
In terms of sheer customer numbers, the approach of aggressively seeking out customers with bigger bundled offerings seems to be paying off; earlier in the year the company announced it had picked up an additional 139,000 fixed broadband service customers from the previous half year. The numbers were even more impressive on the mobile broadband side, where an additional 919,000 mobile and voice customers came on board.
There’s clearly a convenience factor in using Telstra as a sole source of communication products that resonates with consumers; we’ve seen in our own tests that the company’s 3G offerings best its competitors, and the discounts offered by bundling multiple Telstra products make them an easy one-stop shop for ISP, mobile and fixed line services. With the looming spectre of the NBN looming, offering theoretically faster access to all Australians, Telstra’s clearly in a punchy, competitive mood.
But how do these plans stack up? We’ve grabbed the details of Telstra’s latest offerings and put them up against two of the more popular enthusiast’s ISPs, iiNet and Internode to see if Telstra’s bundled offerings represent more convenience than value.
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Price Per Month
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Telstra Bundle
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For the same price, you could get
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$78
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Phone (unlimited local calls), 5GB data, shaped
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$79.90: Internode Easy Broadband S; NodeLine Phone (no included calls), 150GB data, shaped
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$88
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Phone (no included calls), 200GB data, shaped
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$89.95 iiNet ADSL2+ Home-2; phone (no included calls), 200GB data, shaped
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$98
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Phone (unlimited local calls), 100GB data, shaped
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$99.90: Internode Easy Broadband M: NodeLine phone (no included calls), 250GB data, shaped
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$128
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Phone (unlimited local, STD, calls to Telstra mobiles), 200GB data, shaped
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$109.85: iiNet ADSL Home-3; phone (no included calls), 400GB data, shaped
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$148
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Phone (unlimited local, STD, calls to Telstra mobiles, other mobiles), 500GB data, shaped
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$149.90: Internode Easy Broadband XXL: NodeLine phone (no included calls), 1,000GB, shaped
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If you’re scratching your head about the data disparity in the middle of the table, it’s because Telstra’s value proposition there is less about data and more about what you get in terms of phone service; the $88 plan only comes with Telstra’s “Budget” HomeLine service, which doesn’t include unlimited local calls, whereas the $78 and $98 plans do. All of the Telstra plans are 24-month minimum offerings.
