My pal Oliver writes about the recent TelstraClear plan to bring us 100Mbit download rates:
Computerworld writes in their news-ticker today that “Ultrafast broadband coming to NZ”. Well kudos on Telstra for bringing us 100Mbit download rates next year. Oh wait…..
You’ll have either 5,10 or 20GB cap. So that only means that you’ll reach your download limit on the second of each month and not the fourth!
My current broadband plan gives me 20Gb per month at a maximum of 10Mbits. I find the speed adequate, though of course would not object to better speed if it just happened.
What I routinely find a problem is the 20Gb cap. If I exceed it I’m charged an additional $3 or so per Gb. That might seem trivial, but $3 here and there quickly eats into a tight budget.
To move up to the next, 40Gb, cap means signing up for an additional $30 per month — a significant commitment. Clearly I could use another 9 or 10 Gb per month on the current plan for the same cost. In 2 of the last 5 months we’ve exceeded what we’ve prepaid.
The chart attached to this post shows that staying within the 20Gb limit each month is a problem. I’m around 25% of the way through this month and have used about 28% of the allocation. A note further down the page warns that even this data is only an estimate, and that it may be running 6 hours or more behind.
I’ve been cutting back on podcasts I download — I’m becoming very choosy about video podcasts and now select only a few of the excellent TED videos, for example. Forget all the wonderful conferences, or the 1-hour movie explaining Google Wave.
I’m refraining from uploading backups of many of my photos to S3, the online storage service. And I’m not yet downloading some software I’ve bought because it’s 650Mb.
I read of my friends in other countries who are cheerfully backing up many Gigabytes of data, downloading whole movies and TV shows, streaming music all day, and I dream ….
Like Oliver, for me speed isn’t so much of an issue. Faster broadband will simply mean I’ll hit the limits even faster and more easily. I don’t actually want faster; I want more, and cheaper. That’s if I have to choose.
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If you get on to the 40 GB plan then the price per GB drops from $3.00 to $1.50. Of course it’s a bigger commitment, but you can get around that by sharing your connection with a friend. I’ve been doing this with David Bettany for nearly two years now, using wifi over a 1200m range across the motorway from Churton Park to Grenada Village.
We chip in $55 each ($25 month less than you’re paying) for the first 20 GB each, and then extras are only $1.50. So by the time we get to $80 each we already have 36 GB each, not 20.
This btw is totally allowed by TelstraClear’s T&Cs.
That sounds like a great solution there Bruce. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’m not at all sure I’d feel comfortable with it in my own situation or be able to monitor it to be sure both parties were getting their fair share.
Cool idea though.
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